The Government must reintroduce some Covid-19 restrictions in a bid to stop "intolerable and unsafe" hospital conditions, two leading unions have said.
The Irish Association of Emergency Medicine and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation have issued a rare joint statement, calling for the reintroduction of face masks along and for people to return to working from home.
The news comes amid surging pressure on Irish hospitals due to spiralling Covid-19 infections.
President of the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, Dr Fergal Hickey, described the current conditions in emergency departments across the country as "intolerable and unsafe" for both patients and staff.
Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland he said: "I think we need to recognise that for the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation to jointly issue a statement is a very unusual event, and it reflects our concerns about the kind of intolerable and unsafe conditions in Irish emergency departments."
He added: "The healthcare system is currently not coping. Certainly, emergency departments are not in a position to cope.
"We have large numbers of patients in hospital with Covid. We have wards outbreaks of Covid. We have large numbers of people on trolleys. So what we are asking is that steps are taken to flatten the curve again.
"We are not talking about going back to the draconian restrictions. We are talking about the relatively simple interventions of requiring people to wear masks in indoor settings and inviting people to work from home where possible. We're not asking for very much, but it may be the difference for individual patients between life and death."
Dr Hickey said they are not asking for a legal mandate of restrictions from the government, but stronger encouragement of mask-wearing is needed to lessen the risk to patients and staff.
He said: "We're asking for a much stronger encouragement up to and including an informal mandate but at the moment, we are hearing 'ah sure look do whatever you fancy but wearing masks is probably a good idea'. That isn't good enough.
"We know, for example, that if you have to wait for more than five hours from decision to admit in an emergency department, an additional 1 in 82 patients will die as a direct result.
"We know that if you're in an emergency department that's overcrowded, I think there's an increase in 30-day mortality from all causes for all patients.
"They are things that are potentially preventable by some action. So we are asking for the government… to actually act on our request."
Dr Hickey said hospitals had not seen any politicians or senior members of the HSE visit emergency departments.
He said: "We don't see politicians. We don't see senior figures within the HSE visiting emergency departments at the moment because they would be afraid of what they might find. We are in a position to actually describe the reality from patients."
The news comes as the Department of Health was was notified of a further 5,381 PCR-confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday. In addition, 7,127 people registered a positive antigen result through the HSE’s online portal on Tuesday.
The number of patients with the virus who were in hospital as of 8am on Wednesday was 1,610, up from 1,601 the previous day.
The number of virus patients in intensive care (ICU) dropped one to 49.
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