The Irish Nurses and Midwives' Organisation has called for "urgent action" from the Government - as over 600 people are now on trolleys across Irish hospitals.
As of Tuesday morning, 603 patients are without a bed.
That's the highest number since before the Covid-19 pandemic began in Ireland, with the previous record being 640 on February 4, 2020.
The largest wait is in University Hospital Limerick, where 71 people are waiting for treatment while on a trolley.
Cork University Hospital (58), University Hospital Galway(46), Letterkenny University Hospital (44), St.Luke’s Kilkenny (44) are also seeing major issues.
INMO General Secretary, Phil Ní Sheaghdha, pleaded with the Government to step in to help.
She said: "The number of patients without a bed in our hospitals today is simply unacceptable and should not be tolerated. The fact that we have over six hundred patients on trolleys while COVID is still a very real feature in our hospitals is inexcusable.
"Since the first week of January in particular, the INMO has been calling for urgent action to ensure that trolley numbers do not rise to unsustainable levels, yet here we are barely the second week of February with a dangerous amount of patients on trolleys.
"This issue is not just confined to one part of the country, we are seeing huge amounts of patients waiting on trolleys nationwide.
"We are calling for the Emergency Department Taskforce to be convened and for emergency measures to be deployed in the areas worst hit.
"We cannot allow the health service to revert to form and allow pre-COVID levels of overcrowding to become the norm once again in our hospitals. Patients and nursing staff deserve better. If non-emergency services need to be curtailed in order to allow the HSE and hospital groups to get a handle on out of control trolley figures then that must be done.
"It is not acceptable to our members to allow overcrowding become an out of control problem once again."
