GPs are reporting a recent increase in Covid-19 cases among patients, but warn that community spread is happening in early stages of the disease when people are symptomatic but are still negative on antigen tests .
Dr Louise Nestor of the Washington Street Medical Centre in Cork city is one GP who has noticed a rise in the Covid cases both in the busy city centre practice but also at the out of hours SouthDoc clinic.
“I was in SouthDoc last Saturday night and we had a lot of very sick people – they are telling us that they are antigen negative which they probably are at the time when we are seeing them, but we would suspicious that they would be antigen positive the following day,” she said.
Dr Nestor said it does not appear to be more prevalent among one particular age course. However GPs are very busy with “with a lot of kiddies with a lot of sore throats and temps and sinuses that we reckon are Covid, but they are antigen negative when they are ringing you”.
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She said they are getting more phone calls from people who have had positive antigen tests while also seeing more suspect cases face to face who have texted negative antigen tests. “So that’s a big risk for us”, she said.
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Dr Michael Kennedy of the Old School House Surgery in Buttevant in north Cork said he too has noticed a significant increase in Covid over the past month.
“We are seeing a definite increase in the number of cases of Covid among the general populace, but we are also seeing a number of colleagues out with it as well,” he said.
“It is pretty much across the board – young kids, middle aged people, older people.”
However he said most patients are not very sick and typically have sore throat and gastro and upper-respiratory issues. He said they are now getting three or four Covid phone calls a day whereas it had been one or two a fortnight.
Dr Nuala O’Connor is the Irish College of General Practitioners National lead on Covid 19, but she is also seeing a substantial rise in numbers over the last three to four weeks at her own surgery at the Elmwood Medical Practice on Cork’s southside and again says it is impacting all ages.
She said in terms of community spread the main mistake people were making was going to work or children going to summer camps in the early stages of infection.
“And they are doing that because the symptoms are mild, and they are testing negative with antigen tests, and they are contacting us on Day 4 or Day 5 for advice when they are getting chesty, but they haven’t been isolating which means they are in contact with people when they are most infectious.”
She urged people in the early stages, still testing negative, but who feel they are coming down with something to “stay at home”.
While there are 775 in hospital with Covid there are not the same number in ICU as previous waves, she says. “The general experience with the current variants, the Omicron 4 and the Omicron 5 is that it tends to be a milder infection”.
She said just less than half of those in hospital with Covid were admitted for some other reason and tested positive for Covid, “so they are not sick with it whereas just over half have been admitted to hospital with Covid and they are sick with Covid.”
Dr O’Connor said it was significant that most of those who were admitted to hospital with Covid tended to be older people and many without a booster or any vaccine.
She said take-up of the second booster was “not been as good as we would like it to be”. This was due to a multiplicity of factors including there not being much Covid around when it was released, or people who had Covid in the previous four months not yet being eligible.
Dr O’Connor said some people are waiting until a new vaccine comes out in the autumn believing it will be more targeted towards the newer variants while other vaccinated people see Covid is not hugely severe for many and forego another booster.
