CUH pleads for end to car park visits

Cork University Hospital, Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

One of the country’s busiest hospitals has asked relatives of patients not to arrange car park visits.

The plea came from Cork University Hospital (CUH) yesterday. The hospital was caring for 64 Covid-19 patients – the second-highest number of hospital cases in the country, behind Beaumont in Dublin.

More than 100 nurses at CUH are currently not available for work because they have contracted Covid-19 or have been deemed to be a close contact of a confirmed case.

The chronic staff shortage is one of the reasons the hospital has had to close one of its wards.

CUH remains open but only for emergencies and it has appealed to people, where possible, to visit their GPs or the out-of-hours services first.

Its neurosurgical ward has been closed to new admissions and its intensive care unit is at capacity.

Management is prioritising cancer care treatment but they have had to reschedule out-patient appointments.

A strict visitor ban remains in place at CUH but medics said they were aware of several instances of patients leaving the hospital to meet with relatives in cars in the hospital’s surface and basement-level car parks, and of spending extended periods of time sitting with their relatives in the cars.

"These family members are well-intentioned but they are putting the patients, and the hospital staff at risk," one senior medic said.

Patients are entitled to leave the hospital for a walk, or for exercise. This is not a prison. But we must try to educate them to the risks of these car park visits."

It prompted a direct public appeal from the hospital yesterday.

Due to COVID-19 our visiting restrictions remain in place, this is to protect our patients and staff, we ask that visitors do not meet with patients in cars in the hospital car parks, this could expose the patient to COVID-19 & lead to subsequent outbreaks in the wards. #COVID19

— Cork University Hospitals (@CUH_Cork) January 5, 2021

“We ask that visitors do not meet with patients in cars in the hospital car parks – this could expose the patient to Covid-19 and lead to subsequent outbreaks in the wards,” it said.

Community transmission of the virus is rampant, with the spread at its most serious since the start of the pandemic.

Cork has the second-highest rate of Covid-19 in the country next to Dublin.