Paul Reid: Hospital system already under 'significant pressure'

Mr Reid said community transmission was a concern. Picture: Sam Boal / Photocall Ireland

The HSE's chief executive has warned the health service is already coming under significant pressure due to increased Covid-19 cases and warned hospital wards may have to close.

Paul Reid expressed concern that 39% of cases in the last seven days have come from the community and the source cannot be pinpointed. Mr Reid also said that high positivity levels for Covid-19 testing among those presenting for a test is also a worrying sign. 

The HSE chief executive said an outbreak of Covid-19 can have a signficant "freezing" effect on the hospital system that requires a hospital ward to be closed and cleaned. 

“Right now the hospitals are coping, but we will see our hospital system coming under pressure and it doesn't take a large number of cases to start freezing wards and beds.”

This "constrains an already constrained system,” Mr Reid said. 

He would not be drawn on the expected government announcement today on further Covid-19 restrictions for Dublin saying this was a "decision for government".

However, the HSE chief executive said that while no one wants to go backward "if we keep going on the road we are going, we are going into trouble”. 

Mr Reid also praised the collaboration between public health teams and school principals in response to outbreaks of Covid-19 and said pods and if necessary classrooms have been closed efficiently. 

“There has been a really good collaboration between schools and our public health teams,” he said. 

A feared high transmission rate of the virus between children and adults has not emerged in HSE data according to Mr Reid. 

The HSE chief also praised the speed at which Ireland constructed it's testing and tracing system "mid-stream". Mr Reid said seven months ago in Ireland no one knew what a testing and tracing system was. 

Yesterday Mr Reid said the HSE turned down a request from the UK for Irish laboratories to process tests from the under-pressure tracing system in Britain.