Hospital consultants claim it’s up to the public to protect the health service in the midst of the Covid-19 wave as the Government is failing to take action to control cases.
The Irish Hospital Consultants Association urged us to use a high degree of caution due to the widespread community transmission of coronavirus and the increase in hospital cases.
The Department of Health was notified of 9,324 PCR-confirmed cases of Covid-19, as well as 10,542 positive antigen tests logged through the HSE portal yesterday.
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As of 8am, there were 1,466 Covid-19 patients in hospital, up 41 on the same time on Thursday morning.
Some 55 patients were being treated in ICU, an increase of two from Thursday.
And 475 admitted patients were waiting for beds in hospitals yesterday morning, according to the INMO.
A total of 403 patients were waiting in the emergency department while 72 were in wards elsewhere in the hospital.
IHCA president, Professor Alan Irvine, said an increased awareness among the public of the impact of this latest wave of the pandemic could also help protect the health service.
He added: “Once again, the massive capacity deficits in our public hospitals means that they cannot cope with the high number of people currently presenting at our emergency departments and the surge in Covid-19 activity in hospitals without having to cancel essential scheduled surgeries, diagnostic investigations, and outpatient appointments.
“This cannot be the go-to solution to our hospital capacity deficits. Cancelling essential surgeries will only increase record waiting lists even further.
“We recognise the need, after two years of the pandemic, to manage living alongside Covid-19, but at this point we should be in a much better position in terms of having the required hospital capacity to meet the current demand for care.
“However, in the absence of Government action to increase our public hospital capacity, the public may once again have to play its part in getting this latest surge under control.”
Prof Irvine also said hospitals are under-staffed and under-resourced to cope with the Covid-19 surge.
He added: “Anyone in hospital who tests positive for Covid-19 has to be treated on a Covid-19 ward, which restricts what care can be given to other medical or surgical patients.
“In addition, having 5,000 health staff out due to Covid-19 has a devastating impact on the delivery of timely care to patients.
“The vacancies and the shortage of consultants have resulted in excessive workloads being carried by understaffed medical and surgical teams to the detriment of patients.
“Unfortunately, there has been no let-up in the workload pressures being faced by this exhausted cohort of staff.”
The IHCA is also encouraging the 700,000 people yet to receive a third booster vaccine dose to consider doing so in order not only to protect themselves and their families from serious illness but the general public.
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