[ad_1]
Health officials fear that the country’s hospital system has yet to see the full impact of the large number of new coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
There is a time lag, or lag, between the spikes in confirmed cases and the surge in hospitalizations, which health officials are preparing for the next few weeks.
HSE Chief Executive Officer Paul Reid warned yesterday that “we may not have fully seen the delay effect of cases that have been filed in recent weeks.”
There were 330 coronavirus patients in acute care hospitals and 42 in intensive care yesterday morning, Reid said.
In the fortnight until Monday, 19 people had been admitted to intensive care. This included one person in the 0-10 age cohort, six in the 35-64 age group, and 12 age 65 and older.
HSE Clinical Director Dr Colm Henry said the peak cases in Europe show that “we are only two weeks away from overwhelmed healthcare systems.”
Hospitals had not yet had to rely on their “scalability” in intensive care, as was required during the first wave of Covid-19 in the spring, he said.
Some positive signs have emerged that the impact of the Level 5 lockdown across the country and previous restrictions are “starting to kick in,” he said.
The incidence, the rate at which the disease spreads, is “starting to decline” among most age groups, he said. The only cohort where the spread of the virus continues to increase is among the older age groups, Dr. Henry said.
The high number of cases seen in the past weeks among young people is now “rapidly” finding its way into the most vulnerable older demographics, he added.
And the schools?
HSE’s public health consultant, Dr. Abigail Collins, reiterated that the data shows that schools are not “incubators” for the coronavirus.
There are 70 schools where public health teams believe the virus is spreading within educational facilities. In these cases, the average number of new infections was three people, Dr. Collins said. The schools had a “much lower level of forward spread” than other congregated facilities, such as nursing homes.
Dr. Collins also said that in a quarter of the cases in which a student or staff member contracted the virus, public health teams had not contacted the school.
“Not everyone who has a confirmed case of Covid-19 has been inside the educational center within their infectious time period, and if that is the case, then we do not need to do a public health risk assessment,” said.
Meanwhile, yesterday the National Public Health Emergency Team reported six more deaths related to Covid-19.
The latest deaths bring to 1,902 the total number of people known to have died from the disease in Ireland to date.
The team also announced an additional 866 confirmed cases of the virus, bringing the overall total to 60,297 since the outbreak began.
The mean age of the last confirmed cases is 35 years, and the cases are divided almost equally between men (428) and women (438).
242 cases were confirmed in Dublin, 166 in Cork, 56 in Donegal, 54 in Galway, 44 in Meath and the remaining 304 cases are distributed in another 20 counties.
Medical Director Dr. Tony Holohan said again that it is vitally important that anyone experiencing Covid-19 symptoms isolate themselves and call their GP for further advice.
“Self-isolation means staying in your room and avoiding contact with other members of your household. Doing this will protect the people you live with by disrupting the chain of transmission. Again I call on everyone to behave as if they are a close contact. Stay home, except for essential reasons. “
[ad_2]