Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has warned that the number of Covid-19 cases could increase in the coming weeks due to Christmas and New Year socialising.
While he restated that the trolley numbers could get worse, there has been an “encouraging” drop in the number of people waiting for beds.
The number of people on trolleys reached record highs of 931 on Tuesday. According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), this dropped to 838 on Wednesday. Cabinet was briefed on the ongoing issues at emergency departments at its first Cabinet meeting of the year on Wednesday.
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Ministers were told that there has been a large increase in the number of people diagnosed with the flu, as well as COVID-19 and RSV.
In the week before Christmas, 2,331 laboratory-confirmed cases of flu were identified, compared to just 1,000 cases in the same period in 2019. Of these, 637 were hospitalised. Ministers were told that both Covid and RSV hospitalistions have been “high but relatively stable”.
Minister Donnelly explained that there has been a “significant increase” in presentations to Emergency Departments have come from older patients. Up to the second last week in December, some 191,038 over 75s had attended emergency departments in 2022.
On his way into the first Cabinet meeting of the year, the Taoiseach admitted that the number of people on trolleys was “not acceptable”.
Mr Varadkar said: “A lot of patients [are] not getting the dignity they deserve. We are seeing an unprecedented wave of illness at the moment affecting our health system.”
Minister Donnelly once again restated that the situation in hospitals is likely to get worse and the number of people on trolleys could become higher.
He said that there had been an “encouraging reduction” in the number of people in trolleys over the last 24 hours.
However, he said that it was difficult for the HSE to predict when the peak may be reached Minister Donnelly told the Irish Mirror that the number of people who test positive for COVID-19 is also likely to rise due to increased socialising over the Christmas and New Year period.
He later told RTÉ’s News at One that while the Health Service Capacity Review of 2018 stated that 2,400 more hospital beds would be required by 2031, it is “entirely likely that we need to go further”.
However, he did not put a number on how many beds this would involve.
A spokesman for Minister Donnelly noted that 1,000 beds have already been put in place and that is “ahead of schedule”.
Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Beaumont Hospital Peadar Gilligan said yesterday [weds] that 5,000 additional beds were needed.
The Taoiseach told Cabinet that all resources necessary will be given to the health service to tackle the trolley crisis.
When asked if this would require extra financial resources, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said that the funding is there and “very large levels of additional support” has already been provided.
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