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The clinical director of the University of Cork Hospital, Professor Conor Deasy, has said that it was inevitable that elective treatments would be canceled as the number of Covid increased and hospital staff were unavailable because they too had the virus.
People must do the right thing and society must show moral responsibility, he urged.
“We are under considerable pressure, this wave is different from the first wave in that when it occurred in March we were able to effectively empty the hospital.
“In other words, we were able to discharge patients to long-term care centers, to community hospitals, back to the community, we were in a position at the time and we thought it was the right thing to do to reject and in some cases, reject out of elective activity, ”he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
Such a course of action brought with it its own morbidity and mortality, he warned and there was a need to keep the non-Covid current going and at the same time deal with “the tsunami of patients” who are arriving with respiratory and respiratory diseases. symptoms that could be Covid.
Such was the level of concern that even patients who arrived without respiratory symptoms were diagnosed with Covid.
“At the beginning of this trip, we made the decision that we would treat all patients as if they had Covid, we would put on personal protective equipment for all patients requiring a physical examination in the emergency department, whether they were on the Covid pathway. or not.
“With the wild appearances of Covid, you run the risk of staff not thinking it’s Covid and potentially identifying themselves as contacts, so we have challenges in terms of that. We have challenges in terms of porter staff, in terms of nursing staff, in terms of HCAs retiring during the two weeks. We wish them all the best.
Elective treatments
“We hope that they do not develop Covid and that they come back to the front ready to fight and continue the fight. It is challenging for us and has an impact on the hospital’s ability to provide care, and sometimes care that can be postponed needs to be postponed.
“The people who get hit are the ones waiting for elective treatments. We are doing everything we can to identify those who are not at higher risk from this situation.
“Inevitably people will feel uncomfortable, in some cases people’s treatment will be postponed and we are not happy with that. But it is a necessity in the context of a pandemic.
“We will do everything possible for the people who walk through the door, we always do, but we need people to do the right thing at this stage, not wait for the government to declare the level we are at.
“The advice is simple: stay isolated, stay out of the way of other people, this is human-to-human spread, we need people to do the right thing and for society to demonstrate moral responsibility.”
Professor Deasy said that he personally would not like to take on the challenge of catching Covid. “The probability is that I am a healthy man, I will exceed this fine, but there is a five percent chance that I will not. I wouldn’t want to play Russian roulette with my life like that.
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