'War time': Consultant warns areas of healthcare will shut down if Covid surge continues

Dr Catherine Motherway, president of the Intensive Care Society of Ireland, intensive care consultant, ULHG, addresses the HSE weekly operational update on the response to Covid-19, in the UCD O'Brien Centre for Science in UCD, Dublin. Picture: Leon Farrell / Photocall Ireland

Areas of the healthcare system are going to have to shut down if Covid numbers continue to surge according to Dr Catherine Motherway 

The intensive care consultant at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) said we are now in “war time” and while medics will continue to try to treat patients, they may not have the same level of care “as in peace time”.

She said that when there was a surge hospitals had to expand the number of ICU beds which they did through high dependency units, but it is very difficult to ensure the same outcomes as in an intensive care unit.

Dr Motherway said the intensive care system is being stretched. Half of the ICU beds in UHL are occupied by Covid patients. Half of those are elderly with reduced immunity, while the other half are younger unvaccinated people.

“If you are younger and vaccinated you are very unlikely to meet me. It would be far better for you not to meet me,” she told RTÉ radio.

Critical care

Yesterday Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan revealed that since June of this year, one in four people who had Covid-19 and required critical care in our hospitals have passed away.

Dr Motherway said that unvaccinated Covid patients tended to have a longer stay in ICU, sometimes up to double the length of time. She appealed to people to get vaccinated.

The booster campaign is important, she added, as is working from home and reducing the level of contact.

Dr Motherway said she does not envy Nphet and politicians who will have to make difficult decisions.

The Delta variant is extremely transmissible, it was a viral disease that will eventually make its way through the population. It is important to slow it down so that the health system can cope and treat people, but people should avoid it if possible, she urged.

If people have some level of protection (from vaccine) then the virus would move more slowly.

Hospital waiting lists likely to get longer - HSE COO

HSE Chief Operations Officer, Anne O'Connor. File Picture: Sasko Lazarov / Photocall Ireland

Meanwhile, the HSE’s chief operations officer, Anne O’Connor has warned that cancelled procedures, and a policy of not scheduling appointments because of Covid-19, will mean that hospital waiting lists will likely get longer.

However, she said that the situation had not yet reached the point where all non-Covid procedures were being cancelled as has had happened during the worse phase of the pandemic.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s News at One, Ms O'Connor said there are currently 638 people being treated in hospital with Covid-19, 130 of whom are in intensive care. 78 of those patients are being invasively ventilated. 

Although there appeared to be a drop in attendance at emergency departments, Ms O'Connor said that hospitals were still "flat out", with numbers going "in the wrong direction."

She said that Covid figures were putting significant pressure on the system, meaning that some scheduled procedures would have to be deferred as the health service had to be able to respond to the level of demand from Covid.

The situation would be reviewed on a weekly basis, she said, depending on how Covid figures go. 

She said that hospital directors did not wait for national directives, rather their site-by-site situations were being reviewed day by day.

Hospital directors would continue to do that and make decisions based on what their individual hospital could manage and if necessary to moderate their activity, she said.