Trolley crisis breaches agreed care standards as flu illness rates quadruple

An average of 190 patients a day spent more than nine hours on trolleys over the last five days, breaching agreed care standards and forcing the activation of escalation policies in a number of hospitals.

But despite the acute crisis in emergency departments (EDs), health workers are continuing to ignore pleas to get the flu vaccine raising the risk of spreading the illness to vulnerable patients.

This is against a backdrop of warnings from the Health Service Executive (HSE) that flu-like illness rates have quadrupled since the start of the year.