Over half of Covid patients in ICU are unvaccinated
Pictured is HSE CEO Paul Reid at today's weekly HSE operational update on the response to Covid-19. Picture: Leah Farrell / Photocall Ireland
The CEO of the HSE has acknowledged that Covid-19 is continuing to put "significant and unrelenting pressure" on the health service.
Speaking at a briefing this afternoon, Paul Reid said that almost a third of intensive care beds around the country were now being taken up with Covid-19 patients.
Most of those in hospital (39%) are aged between 65-79 years, while just over half (52%) of those in intensive care have not received the vaccination.
Mr Reid said hospitals are “coping”, but were unable to do some of the elective cases they would like.
“We are at a level of transmission in the community that has forced many aspects of the response of our healthcare system overall into surge responses where we are dealing with a very disproportionate set of demands across the boards, whether that’s in our general practice, testing and tracing system overall, our public health teams responding, our hospitals and ICU and right now our compliance checks,” he said.
Outlining the impact the demands across the health service are having, he said 3,500 staff are out of work through Covid-19.
“That is putting a huge pressure on our staff,” he said.
Mr Reid was speaking as officials at Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) confirmed a further 3,024 cases of Covid-19 this evening.
As of 8am this morning, there were 458 patients hospitalised with the virus - a decrease of two on Wednesday’s total.
90 of these patients were being treated in intensive care units.
The @hpscireland has today been notified of 3,024* confirmed cases of #COVID19.
— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) November 4, 2021
As of 8am today, 458 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 90 are in ICU.
*Daily case numbers may change due to future data validation.
Yesterday, the HPSC reported 56 additional deaths of Covid over the past 7 days, bringing the country’s overall death toll to 5,492.
As with previous updates, health officials have said today’s figures are subject to future review and validation.
The HSE CEO also said that he supports recent advice from National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) that people should limit their social contacts as Covid-19 case numbers increase, neither he nor the health service is calling for the return of restrictions.
However, he did urge a range of actions by the public to help turn the tide, including getting vaccinated, following public health messages such as social distancing, wearing face coverings and staying at home if displaying symptoms of the virus.
“A plea from the HSE is we believe these will work and we believe this will help us turn it around,” he said.
Last night, Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan warned the public to scale back their number of social contacts as daily confirmed case totals continue to rise.
“The actions of the health service alone won’t get us out of this current situation, if cases continue to rise there comes a point when no additional testing and tracing, or vaccination or hospital beds or ICU will help," Mr Reid said.
Later in the briefing, Mr Reid said it was “never too late” for people to come forward for the Covid-19 vaccination, insisting that the health service remains available to support people coming forward for the jab.
“For those who remain unvaccinated, we remain available to answer any queries, to answer any of your concerns,” he said.
“We continue to see more and more people come forward for the first vaccination, we’re seeing on average about 1,800 people a day still coming forward to register, and everybody who is unvaccinated should take encouragement from that."
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