By Vivienne Clarke
The director general of the Health Service Executive (HSE) has warned that the hospital system is heading into a difficult period and that some Dublin hospitals are already coming under “significant pressure.”
Paul Reid urged people to follow public health advice. “If we keep going on the road we're going, we're heading onto a road that could get us back to the point where we have to take more restrictive actions,” he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
“Right now the hospitals are coping, but we will see our hospital system coming under pressure and it doesn't take a large number of cases to start freezing wards and beds.”
It is about where people meet.
Mr Reid explained that wards have to be ‘frozen’ and put out of use when a case of Covid is identified. This was to allow for deep cleaning, but it meant they could be out of use for days.
It was of increasing concern that 39 per cent of cases in the last seven days were coming from the community and the source cannot be pinpointed.
When asked about the hospitality sector being impacted when more cases are coming from the community, he explained that the cases were brought into the community from where people had gathered or congregated. “It is about where people meet,” he said.
It was about transmission being brought back into the home.
There was a need to get back to basics and for people to reduce their number of contacts, he said.
Mr Reid added that the issue of intensive care beds will be part of the winter plan, to be launched next week. He said that at the height of the pandemic, there had been close to 400 beds “so we'll bring it on as we need.”
The director general went on to praise the efforts of school principals and administrators in keeping their pupils safe. Of the 2,100 tested from 96 schools there had been only 35 cases of Covid. In general the turn around time for testing for cases from schools was within 24 hours, he said.
