NI less prepared for 2020 pandemic than a decade earlier

A three-year political impasse and ongoing budget uncertainty left the health system in Northern Ireland less well equipped to deal with a pandemic than it had been a decade earlier, the region's chief medical officer has said.

"I think that it is absolutely preferable to have a government in Northern Ireland, to have ministers in place," he told inquiry chair Heather Hallett. But he said implementation of such measures stalled between 2017 and 2020 as there were no ministers in place to sanction them. He said that was only one half of the problem facing the health system. The CMO said the other issue was the financial uncertainty created by operating on a"hand-to-mouth existence" on one-year budget cycles, rather than having longer-term spending plans.

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