The number of people being treated for Covid-19 in the State’s hospitals has risen sharply on Tuesday and a further 9,006 cases of the disease have been reported.

HSE chief executive Paul Reid warned that the Omicron variant was “running rife” in the community as the latest figures showed 521 people with Covid-19 were being treated in hospital, an increase of 60 on Monday’s total. The total includes 92 people in intensive care units, an increase of one on the previous day.

Mr Reid told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that transmission of the variant appeared to be “rampant” with test positivity rates of some 50 per cent being recorded in recent days.

Hospital Report

“The simple message is, if you think you have the virus, avoid gatherings with people,” he said.

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Some 50,000 cases have been reported over the last five days, but Mr Reid said Ireland was still at the early stage of the Omicron surge. Government sources said the variant now accounts for some 87 per cent of all new Covid-19 cases and that this was expected to rise to nearly 100 per cent by the weekend.

The Government has no plans to hold a Cabinet meeting this week but the pandemic situation and case numbers are being closely monitored. The source said the main concern was around ensuring that the spike in case numbers did not lead to hospitals and intensive care units being swamped by admissions.

Mr Reid said the numbers hospitalised with the disease had been relatively stable of late, but that he was concerned there could be a lag between confirmed cases and people being seriously ill, which would increase pressures in time.

Test booking

Many people have reported problems booking a Covid-19 PCR test in recent days and Mr Reid said extra capacity was being introduced into the system. He said weekly testing capacity was being increased to 300,000 and that up to 400,000 antigen tests were being sent out to close contacts.

“Please stick with us, yes there are delays. It is important to isolate especially with this volume of cases in the community.”

The testing service was, he said, working through cases on the basis of priority – those referred by GPs, close contacts of confirmed cases and those with positive antigen test results.

There were very few appointments for PCR tests available at centres across the country via the HSE online booking system on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr Reid said evidence from GPs provided an early sign of hope that the variant was not leading to severe illness, but he cautioned that this could be just among those who were vaccinated and had received a booster vaccine. The number of health staff absent due to Covid-19 had fallen from around 6,000 to 4,000 but this could go in the wrong direction as the variant spreads, he said.

He said more than two million booster/third doses of the vaccine had been administered to date. The vaccine registration portal for children aged five years to 11 years has opened and those in high risk categories and with family members who had health problems would start receiving jabs from January 3rd.

There was video information on the HSE website which allowed parents to show their children what was involved and what the experience would be like.

Vaccination rate

Immunologist Prof Kingston Mills said Ireland’s high vaccination rate should mean that the State sees lower levels of hospitalisations as a result of the Omicron variant than the UK.

He said there would be high case numbers in January, but he predicted that there would not be the same high rates of hospitalisation as at the start of this year.

“A lot of cases will be quite mild, people will just get on with it,” he said.

The number of days people who are close contacts have to self isolate should be reduced, he added. Once people had three negative antigen tests the chances were they were not transmitting the virus, he said.

Immunology expert Professor Luke O’Neill said the only way to stop the virus “ruining” next Christmas was to get the wider world vaccinated.

He called on the public “to keep banging the drum” and to “get down on bended knee” to appeal to people who have not yet been vaccinated to do so.

Speaking on the Late Breakfast show with Clare McKenna on Newstalk radio, Prof O’Neill said “we’ve got to help them change their minds”.

There were now five different vaccines against Covid, he said, one of which Novavox, had been developed using “old style” technology which addressed concerns expressed by some people who were opposed to vaccination because of the technology involved.