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The Cabinet Committee on Covid-19 will meet tomorrow to discuss the growing number of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan will make a presentation at the meeting about the escalating situation that has seen new cases skyrocket since Christmas.
The meeting will be attended by the leaders of the three government parties together with several senior ministers and their officials.
After the meeting, the ministers will discuss the best course of action to deal with the third wave of Covid-19.
Once a decision is made, a memorandum will be drawn up and presented to Cabinet on Wednesday.
One of the key focuses of the meeting will be whether to extend the school holidays or not.
Senior ministers from all parties are interested in extending the school recess to help prevent the spread of the disease in the coming weeks.
However, the Minister of State for the Department of Education, Josepha Madigan, said today that she hopes that schools will open.
It comes when about 7,000 new Covid-19 cases a day are expected to be reported over the next week, HSE CEO Paul Reid warned.
With hospitals seeing a 20% daily increase in admissions for Covid-19, Mr. Reid added that this week the HSE will regress “significantly” in elective care.
“We have run out of adjectives to describe how serious it is at the moment, but we are getting into a very serious situation in general with the cases but also with the hospitalizations,” he said in Newstalk breakfast.
“We have around 50 free ICU beds and 500 general beds, so we are still waiting, however, the trajectory that we are seeing tells us in January that we could be increasing to 1,500-2,000 hospitalized cases and an increase in ICU from anywhere. place between 250 and 430 “.
Mr. Reid said there are currently 3,000 HSE employees currently out of work due to having Covid or being a close contact.
This occurs when Cork University Hospital (CUH) announced that more than 100 of its nurses are not available for work due to virus-related reasons.
Speaking on RTE Radio 1’s Today with Claire Byrne, the HSE CEO said they have to deviate from the projections that were made and “accept that this is now rampant.”
And he added: “Test and trace is no longer our first line of defense, our first line of defense is really what the public does with us now drastically, radically, reduce contacts urgently, stay home.”
Since close contacts will no longer be tested due to the system becoming overwhelmed, Mr. Reid said GPs are “overwhelmed” and doing “a phenomenal job.”
He added that those who have been tested and tested positive has risen significantly, with some centers reporting a 50 percent test positivity rate.
On launching the vaccination, Reid said it will be a seven-day program and 40,000 vaccines are expected to be delivered per week.
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