The Irish Medical Organisation warned last night that Ireland was experiencing an epidemic of viral illness, but the Department of Health insisted there was no evidence of a flu epidemic.
Non-emergency surgical admissions were cancelled at hospitals across the State as the medical system strained to meet the demands being placed on it by the upsurge in respiratory problems and patients suffering from flu-like symptoms. Some hospitals have already begun putting patients on trolleys and doubling up beds in wards to meet the demand.
But the Department of Health said information provided by the health boards, hospitals, the Virus Reference Laboratory and the National Disease Surveillance Centre showed the high level of serious viral and bacterial illness was due to a range of viral and bacterial agents, including flu. The majority of illness was not due to influenza, the Department said.
"So far, the virological evidence is not there to confirm an epidemic, but the clinical evidence on the ground is there is an epidemic of respiratory illness," IMO spokesman Dr Cormac Macnamara said.
Of the 400 samples submitted by doctors to the Virus Reference Laboratory at UCD, just 60 have been identified as influenza. "The virus has been confirmed in samples from patients as far north as Cavan, down through the midlands and into Wexford, as well as loads of cases around Dublin," laboratory manager Mr Seamus Dooley said.
Accident and emergency departments in the Eastern Health Board area were under greatest pressure, the Department of Health said. An estimated two-thirds of beds at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin were occupied yesterday by patients with respiratory problems. Thirty patients were on trolleys at the Mater Hospital last night.
In the mid-west, the 88-bed Ennis General Hospital had 120 patients and there were 162 patients at the 129-bed Limerick Regional Hospital.
The Department urged persons over 65 and other at-risk-persons who had not yet been vaccinated against flu to do so now. But Dr Macnamara warned that the flu vaccination given at this stage would provide little protection against the virus.