Northern Ireland’s after-hours GP services are “overwhelmed.”

According to a top physician, this Christmas has been the hardest for out-of-hours GP services.

Dr. Tom Black, the British Medical Association’s chair for Northern Ireland, reported that many patients were visiting GP offices.

According to Dr. Black, emergency rooms have also been unusually busy.

The Western Trust issued a warning on Tuesday stating that there were more than 100 individuals waiting to be seen in its emergency room and more people were waiting to be admitted to hospitals.

The Southern and Belfast trusts on Monday both issued similar cautions.

According to The Southern Trust, their after-hours section gives urgent calls priority.

According to Dr. Black, Western Urgent Care had 640 calls on Christmas Eve, an increase from 158 calls the previous year.

In an interview with the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster show, he said that health care was overburden.

It has been for the previous two months, he said. Since September, “we’ve really battled to keep things going.”

Prioritizing patients

Dr. Black claim that various variables, including strep A, Covid-19, the flu, respiratory viruses, and vomiting bugs, were responsible for the difficulties experience throughout the health sector.

We have never seen like the confluence of an unprecedented number of infections peaking at this time, all of which are different.

We anticipated it would be harder after leaving Covid, but we weren’t prepare for it to be this bad.

He claimed that medical personnel had to put patients first because of the circumstances.

That, he continued, is what we’ll have to do for the foreseeable future.

We are attempting to ensure that the most vulnerable and sickest people are seen because we do not have enough resources to treat everyone with a sore throat or a cough.

‘Shared resource’

The challenges the health system in Northern Ireland is facing have been well-document.

In December, Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital’s emergency room was made available to BBC News NI.

Staff members described treating the severely ill in “overcrowded and undignified” settings, while a senior doctor compared the situations to “battlefield” medicine.

Almost 100 general practitioners (GP) practices in Northern Ireland sought emergency assistance or were in crisis, the British Medical Association said in August.

Dr. Black caution people to only go to emergency rooms in an emergency because Wednesday is expect to be “the busiest day we’ve ever seen.”

It’s a resource that is share, he said.

We all pay taxes for this, and we understand that you can’t cross the line if your toe is hurt. We have to watch out for the most vulnerable members of our society, especially in this day and age.”