Hospitals are seeing a “troubling rise” in COVID cases over the past few weeks, the Chief Clinical Officer has told The Pat Kenny Show.
Dr Colm Henry said the two sub-variants of the virus - BA.4 and BA.5 – now account for about 70% of all new infections in Ireland.
He noted that people who picked up the Delta variant in last summer and autumn or the BA.1 variant around Christmas in the New Year have no additional protection against the virus.
He told Jonathan Healy that more cases are being picked up by PCR and registered on the HSE antigen portal.
“We have seen a troubling rise in hospitalisations,” he said. “Only back at the end of May, it was 180 and now its 496 this morning.
“They are not near the big numbers we saw at the peak of the really bad pandemic when we had an unvaccinated population and no protection against this but still, it is having an impact on the acute hospital system.
“Critical care numbers less so – they’re steady; they’re about the same as they were at the end of May, but we’re watching those hospital numbers very closely.”
He said more than half of the people in hospital with the virus were admitted because of their COVID symptoms.
“Over half are sick with COVID and just less than half - or 45% - happen to be showing up with COVID but actually are in hospital for something else,” he said.
He said the increased numbers are linked to the new sub-variants.
“In terms of these new sub-variants what it means is they are more transmissible.,” he said.
“They have a real growth advantage over the previous variants. That also means that previous immunity from say that Delta variant that was right across the country in summer and autumn last year, that immunity does not necessarily protect you from infection with this type.
“What we are seeing is people who were infected with Delta in summer and autumn last year or even with BA.1 variant which was Christmas into early new year can get reinfected.
“Their immunity does not give them protection against BA.4 or BA.5.”
“This morning I can tell that those two now account for about 70% of the new cases. They are displacing and replacing the previous variants we saw.”
