Life inside an ICU in Northern Ireland

A look inside the respiratory emergency department at Craigavon Hospital in Co Armagh where patients with Covid-19 are being cared for.STORYThe real test for the health service will come when social distancing measures are relaxed, a senior consultant has said.As politicians consider how to transition the public out of lock down Dr Damien Scullion said Covid-19 will either “proliferate or remain dormant”.“We’re all concerned about a second peak, we’re also concerned that a second peak may coincide with the seasonal flu which in many ways could be a lot worse,” he said.“The real test will come when the isolation measures start to be relaxed and we see how the public react to that and how the virus either proliferates or remains dormant, hopefully it’s the latter.”The number of people who have died after testing positive for coronavirus in Northern Ireland rose to 387 on Monday, after another six deaths were reported.Although the true figure is likely to be higher when deaths in the community are factored in, the most recent modelling to be made public suggests the death toll could be 1,500 – a significant reduction from the up to 15,000 worst case scenario indicated at the start of the pandemic.Dr Scullion, a senior consultant at Craigavon Area Hospital, paid tribute to the public for those figures.“I think it’s very important to commend the public in Northern Ireland for the way they have adapted to this … and you can see from the figures that this really has worked because certainly we were not as busy as we thought we could be,” he said.The Co Armagh hospital has been transformed since the pandemic started with new signage and a loudspeaker which used to sound the anti smoking policy now reading out symptoms of Covid-19.