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More than half of the Covid-19 patients who need to be transferred to intensive care units are under the age of 65, as the hospital system remains under significant pressure.
Health Service Executive Director Paul Reid said there are 1,965 Covid-19 patients in hospitals, of which 219 are in ICUs.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, he said there were a total of 318 people in the ICU, leaving 26 adult ICU beds free across the country.
“The phase is moving towards an extremely dangerous position for us,” he said.
“He is moving into an extremely dangerous position for us.”
Paul Reid, Executive Director of HSE, Warns of Pressures on the Irish Hospital System Due to Current Increase in Covid-19 Cases | https://t.co/icwPexoV6b pic.twitter.com/R3Jp5YXPzp
– RTÉ News (@rtenews) January 22, 2021
Mr. Reid said that “once we get to 350, it will be more difficult to provide the same levels of care.”
He said that patients were transferred from the west of the country to the east last night as part of the national augmentation plan.
The Saolta Hospital Group, which comprises six hospitals in the west and northwest of the country, confirmed that last night a patient was transferred from one of its facilities to a Dublin hospital.
Reid said the number of hospitalizations “remains” at around 1,950, but the HSE expects ICU admissions to continue to grow.
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He said that where any hospital has used all of its ICU and augmentation capacity, the next step is to transfer patients to a local hospital within the group, but when that is not possible, patients will be transferred to a hospital that is not in the group.
Reid said there have been 2,700 hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the past two weeks and 163 of these patients have advanced to the ICU.
He said that of the patients transferred to the ICU, two were in the age group 0-18 years; six were in the age group 19 to 34 years; 85 were in the 35-64 group, while 70 were in the 65 or older group.
Reid said that Covid-19 does not discriminate and “certainly does not forgive young people either.”
HSE CEO Paul Reid says the number of ICU patients is expected to continue to grow over the next period of time. In relation to people with Covid who are hospitalized, he said that he is currently “on hold” | https://t.co/icwPexoV6b pic.twitter.com/RG32LBsmIN
– RTÉ News (@rtenews) January 22, 2021
He urged people not to lower their guard as, “speaking from an HSE perspective, we are in this for the long term.”
“I think we are all realizing, as healthcare workers, that we are going to have to maintain what we are doing for much longer than we think we would have,” he added.
Reid said supply is the only limiting factor for the vaccination program, but to date more than 73,000 front-line healthcare workers have received the vaccine.
On testing and tracing, Mr. Reid said the HSE will not test close contacts until the number of daily cases falls “well below 2,000.”
“We would say to people, please assume they are a close contact, and please assume that the people they know are potential cases. That’s the kind of level of diligence and vigilance that we need.”
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