Rising Covid-19 cases set to put increased pressure on hospitals, Holohan warns

Rising cases of Covid-19 risk “increased pressure on the hospital system” in the coming weeks, reducing capacity for patients suffering from other ailments or needing emergency treatment, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has been warned.

In an update on the pandemic to Mr Donnelly, chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan wrote that the “acute hospital system remains under considerable pressure”.

The update was written on June 10th – when there were 355 inpatients with Covid-19 across the country’s hospitals. Since then, that figure has risen to 515 as of 8am on Friday morning.

“If the rising trend in hospital cases continues, we are likely to see increased pressure on the hospital system over the coming weeks. This will further reduce hospital capacity to admit patients for scheduled and unscheduled care,” Dr Holohan told the Minister.

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He said that while mortality associated with the disease remains relatively stable, “there has been a recent increase in the number of notified outbreaks in some key settings which continues to be monitored”.

The letter outlined how the Covid-19 burden on acute hospital care has “increased considerably over recent days”, alongside the daily average number of newly confirmed cases in hospital.

Just more than half – 51 per cent – of cases in hospital are being treated for the disease, with the remainder classified as “asymptomatic infectious” cases.

Senior public health sources said the letter outlined the changing impact of Covid - that the key issue would be the impact on the wider health service, and that the load would be equivalent to periodic winter flu season and a trolley crises for an unknown number of years.

While much of the widespread testing infrastructure, which was constructed to track the progress of the disease at the peak of the pandemic, has been stood down, all signs are now pointing to a renewed wave of Covid and increased levels of infection in the country.

Dr Holohan wrote that the number of infections detected and reported daily is climbing, including among older age groups, and that after a period of decline, more virus is being detected in wastewater testing programmes designed to estimate the prevalence in the community.

“A number of epidemiological indicators have deteriorated in recent days suggesting that levels of Sars-CoV-2 transmission have increased,” Dr Holohan told Mr Donnelly. This is alongside an increasing prevalence of sub-lineages of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, named BA.4 and BA.5 which is “likely contributing significantly to the current epidemiological profile,” Dr Holohan wrote.

This mirrors comments by the HSE’s chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry during the week. He said that the rise may be attributable in part to the emerging variants and urged all those eligible to take their Covid vaccine or booster.

Mr Donnelly told RTÉ last week that despite the rising numbers, which he described as a “huge increase in a short period of time” in hospitalisations, additional restrictions were not under consideration.

Damien McCallion, the head of the HSE’s vaccination programme, indicated that the rollout will move to a new phase shortly, with the health service working on plans for the autumn and winter.

There were 2,742 PCR-confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the State on Wednesday, according to the most recently published figures. That was an increase from the 546 PCR-confirmed cases on Tuesday, and the 888 on Monday.

The number of registered positive antigens also remains high, with 1,960 on Wednesday and 2,006 on Tuesday.

There were 26 Covid-19 related deaths reported by public health officials in the week up to Wednesday, bringing the total number of pandemic-related deaths in the State to 7,442.