HSE will check if maternity units are complying with visiting guidance for partners
Linda Kelly, Glanmire, Cork, pictured last year with her baby Amy-Kate, campaigning with Women Ascend for better access to maternity units to partners. New advice was issued to maternity units last week expanding access for partners. Picture: Denis Minihane
The HSE will survey maternity units next week to ask if they are complying with new visiting guidance, the HSE chief clinical officer has said.
This comes as the vaccine rollout continues to pick up speed.
Dr Colm Henry said today that he is satisfied all 19 units can now safely comply with the first set of guidelines issued in May.
These include having partners of pregnant women attend for the 20-week anomaly scans, labour, and birth in labour units, minimum 30-minute daily visits, and access to neonatal intensive care units.
New advice went out last week to the units, he said, expanding the access where safe to do so.
“We are going to do a survey in the coming week to ensure that units are complying, and expand that to reflect the areas where women and their partners may feel a particular anxiety,” he said.
"We will be surveying those hospitals next week to assess compliance."
The recent advice includes access to scans at early pregnancy assessment units for partners of pregnant women.
This is on the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) website and includes emergency access for partners of women in their third trimester.
Dr Henry also said the vaccines continue to offer a solid level of protection to older residents in nursing homes.
There is currently just one outbreak in a nursing home. And vaccine data shows 99% of over-80s are fully vaccinated.
Advice that visiting is allowed as per the HPSC guidelines remains in place, he said.
“We haven’t changed the advice,” he said.
The HPSC advises visitors should be nominated, but that a resident can nominate as few or as many people to visit as they like.
Numbers visiting at any one time should be balanced by the nursing home based on the current safety situation.
Overall up to Wednesday, 4.1m doses were given, including 1.6m people vaccinated with two doses. And 72,036 people were vaccinated with the single-shot Janssen vaccine including over 8,000 done in pharmacies.
A total of 93% of people aged 60 to 69 have their first doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and 43% are fully vaccinated.
Some young people are now also fully vaccinated because they are at very high or high risk from Covid-19 and placed higher on the priority list than their age would suggest.
One in five people or 21% of those aged 20 to 29 have their first vaccine shot and 15% are fully protected.
Of those aged 30 to 39 there is now 30% with one shot and 19% who are fully vaccinated.
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