Northern Ireland’s chief medical officer, Prof Michael McBride, has expressed concerns about the lack of opportunity for individuals to visit their loved ones, especially in care homes and for those receiving end-of-life care during the relentless Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking at London’s Covid-19 inquiry this Tuesday, McBride voiced his concerns about whether the right choices were made regarding end-of-life visits.
In his opinion, an approach that acknowledged the complexities of the situation might have served better, especially recognising that the missed moments with loved ones are irreplaceable. This long session of evidence was part of a study analysing the toll taken by the virus on health service systems across Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales.
Prof McBride has also shared evidence during hearings in Belfast, alongside the first ministers and other politicians. The questioning covered a broad range of topics such as shielding, advice for the clinically extremely vulnerable to stay at home to safeguard themselves against the virus.
In hindsight, McBride believes that the initial advice on shielding could have been presented more subtly to manage fear and anxiety which overwhelmed those individuals who were shielding.
He was candid in admitting that the burden of the pandemic was severe, especially for those working in strenuous conditions, and acknowledges that more could have been done. Baroness Hallett, the chairwoman of the inquiry, expressed her worries about the difficulty in recording data concerning the ethnic background in the Northern Ireland health service. McBride mentioned the inadequate ethnicity coding resulting in an inability to track Covid-19 trends from an ethnic background perspective.
“In healthcare organisations, ethnicity is usually logged, although the consistency of this process is questionable and evidently needs improvement,” he remarked. The investigation also delved into the challenges that hit Northern Ireland’s healthcare sector at the pandemic’s onset, causing it to ill-equipped to fulfil the needs of its citizens as Covid-19 took hold, according to Professor McBride.
When asked by Nick Scott KC, a lawyer for the investigation, Prof McBride concurred that the durations to first outpatient visits in Northern Ireland were “roughly, comparatively, around 2,000 times less satisfactory” than those in England. This situation, stated the chief medical officer, had an “unbearably adverse effect on individuals waiting for pre-scheduled care which was postponed because of the pandemic.”