Inside the Mater hospital: ‘There’s no optimistic scenario’

In the past week, emergency admissions to the Mater hospital in Dublin have reached extraordinarily high levels, with 300 patients attending on a single day recently and 250 passing through most days. During 2020, the daily admissions rate was about 200.

On Saturday there were 607 Covid-19 in Irish hospitals including 118 people in ICU. Dublin’s Mater hospital is currently caring for 66 Covid patients.

It's clear at this point that Ireland is in the depths of a fourth wave of the pandemic and staff working in the Mater are at the coalface of this latest phase in the crisis.

The high vaccination take-up in Ireland means the number of people dying from Covid-19 is significantly lower than during last January’s wave. However, some people are still getting very sick, particularly those who are unvaccinated, and they’re filling up the remaining hospital beds around the country.

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Irish Times features writer and columnist Jennifer O’Connell first visited the Mater to report on the health crisis in June 2020; a time when we naively hoped the end of the pandemic was in sight. She went back to the Mater last week to a hospital seriously struggling under the strain of the every-increasing number of Covid cases.

But who are the people ending up in hospital with Covid? Are they vaccinated or unvaccinated? And how worried do we need to be about our hospitals ability to cope with this surge in numbers?

On today’s podcast, O’Connell describes to presenter Sorcha Pollak the subdued and fearful mood among staff who admitted to feeling scared and exhausted.

The situation in our hospitals is grim, says O’Connell, and it’s only getting worse. And though booster shots do offer some hope, doctors believe another lockdown before Christmas is almost inevitable.

You can listen to the podcast here:

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In the News is presented by reporters Sorcha Pollak and Conor Pope