Use private hospitals to combat Covid-19 and flu surge, Taoiseach says

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has told the Health Service Executive (HSE) to “deploy all resources available” to meet the wave of Covid-19 and other infections in hospitals, telling journalists in a pre-Christmas media briefing that the organisation could use existing budgets to utilise the resources of private hospitals if necessary.

“My message to the HSE... is that I want all resources available to be deployed immediately and over the winter period, and that includes the use of private hospitals, use of overtime, whatever can be done should be done to minimise suffering and inconvenience to patients,” Mr Varadkar said.

Mr Varadkar met senior Health Service Executive (HSE) officials on Friday to discuss the rapidly growing number of patients flooding into hospitals in recent days as a wave of respiratory infections, including but not limited to Covid, swept through communities before Christmas.

[ GP says ‘nearly all’ cases coming before him are now respiratory related ]

[ Surge in winter viruses to put health service under ‘highest pressure’ ever, HSE warns ]

[ Hospital overcrowding matches previous record as 760 patients wait on trolleys ]

Damien McCallion, HSE chief operating officer, said the healthcare system and hospitals in particular were now under “sustained pressure”, amid a surge in winter viruses.

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“There are a number of hospitals that are under more pressure than others, I would say now everywhere is seeing increased demand,” he said.

Hospitals were particularly seeing an increase in elderly people attending emergency departments, he said.

There were 360 patients waiting to be seen in emergency departments on Friday morning, down from a high of 760 earlier in the week, according to the Irish Nurse and Midwives Organisation’s “trolley watch” count.

Some 635 people were in hospital with Covid-19 infections as of 8pm on Thursday, according to the HSE. In total there were 301 patients in intensive care units, 22 of whom had Covid-19, latest figures show.

A new report from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) said cases of the flu “continued to increase”, with 1,174 officially recorded last week, up from 669 cases the week before.

Overall there are currently 1,200 people in hospitals with respiratory illness, between the flu, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Current HSE projections show an expected continued surge in cases of flu and Covid-19 could put the health service under “the highest pressure” it has ever experienced.

The number of flu cases in hospital may rise to 900 by the first week in January, alongside up to 1,000 Covid-19 cases.

Mr Varadkar has rejected criticism that the Government was not prepared for the pressure the hospital system was facing.

The Taoiseach said while there were no plans to reintroduce mandatory wearing of face masks, people were encouraged to wear them in crowded spaces and on public transport.

He appealed to people with respiratory symptoms to remain at home and for people to avail of flu and Covid-19 vaccines.

Mr Varadkar said the health system has almost 1,000 more beds than before Covid, and added: “We’ve never had more doctors, nurses, midwives working in our health service, we’ve never had a bigger budget.”

However, he added that people working in the health service know that it is “never just a matter of money”, and that strong management, good clinical leadership and adequate resources need to be in place.

Responding to charges from Sinn Féin that the situation in hospitals was predictable, Mr Varadkar said that this was not the time for “political point scoring”, adding that “the fact that a problem is predictable is not the same as solving it”.

Mr Varadkar said he had “absolute confidence” in Stephen Donnelly as Minister for Health. “He has done a lot of things in the last couple of years, made a lot of progress on issues that we haven’t seen enough progress on in recent years,” he said.

David Cullinane TD, Sinn Féin health spokesman, said hospitals had reached a point where they were now “dangerously overcrowded”.

The “dysfunction” in emergency departments was a result of “everything going wrong at the same time in a health service which does not have enough capacity,” he said.

General Practitioners have also reported being under significant pressure in recent weeks, due to the surge in winter viruses.

Dr Mel Bates, medical director of the Northdoc service in north Dublin, said GPs were “flat out” at present.

Local doctors had been hit by “horrific” levels of “unexpected demand” in recent weeks, which they were struggling to cope with, he told The Irish Times.

Demand for the D Doc out-of-hours service was up 116 per cent compared to the same period last year, he said.

Recent concerns about harmful strains of Strep A had “spooked” a lot of parents, he said. “The under-16s are taking up 50 per cent of the appointments … The system is falling over” he said.

While GPs were trying to prioritise urgent appointments it was “still very hard to keep up,” Dr Bates said.

Phil Ní Sheaghdha, Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) general secretary, said there was now a “real concern” from nurses that staff could not provide safe care due to current pressures.

Nurses, midwives, junior doctors and emergency care consultants had all been “sounding the alarm” for weeks, she said.

“When the frontline staff are saying it’s unsafe and when they’ve been saying that for a number of weeks, then the HSE should have reacted much earlier,” she said.

Cork University Hospital was topping the list for numbers waiting on hospital trolleys on Friday with the INMO reporting some 37 people on trolleys in the hospital while the Mercy University Hospital was joint third highest nationally with 20 on trolleys.