Ireland’s hospitals are battling a ‘perfect storm’ of high COVID cases, Emergency Department attendances and staff absences.

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, HSE Chief Paul Reid said there were 1,395 patients with COVID in Irish hospitals – up 314 on this day last week.

Meanwhile, there were 61 in intensive care, which is up 16 on last week.

Mr Reid said around half the hospital patients were diagnosed with COVID after being admitted for other ailments but warned that the virus is still have a “very significant impact” on hospitals because each patient has to be treated infection prevention and control measures.

Yesterday, a further 7,700 PCR-confirmed Covid-19 cases and nearly 16,000 positive antigen tests were announced.

Mr Reid there are several issues impacting hospitals and healthcare settings.

“Our real concerns in our hospitals and healthcare settings are five key things,” he said.

“The first thing is the high levels of transmission we are seeing in the community are having a very significant impact on hospitalisations.

“The second point is, we are seeing record levels of emergency department attendances now that we have never seen before week-on-week.

“The third one is, of those emergency department attendances, a significant proportion are older persons who are attending and that leads to higher admissions levels – about 50%.

“Then the nursing homes, we now have 64% of our nursing homes, which is impacting on our discharges from hospital and finally, like every industry in every sector, we are seeing a significant growth in staff absences through COVID-positive cases among staff.

“So, that is a whole kind of perfect storm of issues impacting on us in our health system.”

INMO

It comes as the Irish Nurses and midwives Organisation (INMO) calls for the reintroduction of mandatory mask wearing in certain places and the postponement of elective care procedures in some hospitals.

There was a total of 654 patients are being treated on trolleys and in wards at hospitals across the country this morning – a slight drop on yesterday’s figure of 660.

University Hospital Limerick is worst affected with 100 patients on trolleys, followed by Letterkenny with 54 patients and cork with 50.

Absences

Mr Reid said staff absences are having a real impact.

“We have 4,300 staff out in the HSE with COVID,” he said.

“On top of that, we have a further almost 1,000 people out in nursing homes. So, we are seeing an increasingly crippling effect of losing staff at a time of increasing pressure on the hospitals.”

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