that's it, i'm gone. battle on, raise the wee ones, to what you have to do. we have no choice. if it was the other way around she would have to do the same and i would probably be telling her the same. the covid summer surge has been particularly strong in northern ireland. the case rate is currently 90 per 100,000 people, the highest of the uk four nations by far. the death rate is also presently the worst in the uk. although it is four times lower than at the peak of the pandemic. part of the reason for the alarming figures is that fewer people have come forward for a first vaccine dose than in england, scotland or wales. we do see that vaccine uptake is lower in areas of greater social deprivation and compared with the rest of the uk, northern ireland does have significantly more deprivation. some parts of northern ireland have been relatively spared from the virus during earlier waves