pandemic

Vaccines – What do You Think?

Slugger Team on December 6, 2025, 7:00 am

| Readers 980

According to Auryn Cox of the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4q5g2ww55o ) we are heading for a difficult flu season. Auryn reports, “Flu cases among adults and children across Northern Ireland have more than trebled in the last two weeks, rising from 273 to 954, official figures show. Children and young people have been particularly affected and were admitted to hospital with flu with higher rates than any other age group in the week ending 23 November. In that same week the positivity …

Space to Police

Soapbox on April 2, 2021, 1:30 pm

| Readers 5349

Simon Byrne is the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Today he writes for Slugger about the policing challenges during the COVID 19 pandemic 2021 is a defining year for policing. The Police Service of Northern Ireland will have been around for two decades. The world around us has changed so much in those 20 years and whilst new opportunities and issues have emerged, the challenges of the past still remain very much in the present for …

New Decade, Same Nonsense

Sarah Creighton on November 12, 2020, 8:27 am

| Readers 2146

With the four-week circuit breaker due to expire on Friday, people across Northern Ireland are looking for certainty. Businesses need to know if they can re-open at the weekend. Workers want to know if they’ll get an income over the next few weeks. All the while, six of Northern Ireland’s hospitals are at full capacity. As of this morning, the Executive still hasn’t agreed a way forward. Robin Swann proposed a two-week extension of the circuit breaker but this was …

What’s in the Coronavirus Bill?

Sarah Creighton on March 23, 2020, 9:13 am

| Readers 2407

This week the government intends to push its Coronavirus Bill through Parliament. In its “summary of impacts” document, the government states that the bill is “temporary, emergency legislation” which intends to “provide powers needed to respond to the current coronavirus epidemic.” MPs will be expected to grapple with the 300-page bill over the course of a few days. It will, for as long as it is in operation, fundamentally change our way of life. The legislation represents the biggest diminution …