A “significant and sustained” increase in flu levels is likely to take place over the next three or four weeks, adding to pressure on the health service, Dr John Cuddihy, director of the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HSPC) warned on Thursday. As a result, the flu season may continue until April.
The current flu season has not yet peaked, he said, and levels of Covid and RSV remain significant. Doctors have described the current situation as a “perfect storm”, with three respiratory illnesses prevalent among the population.
For the next 10 to 12 weeks, the HSE’s aim is to support its staff, work to protect patient safety and to minimise the impacts on patients, he said.
Short-term measures being taken include additional GP clinic slots, greater use of private sector beds and diagnostics.
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Dr Cuddihy said this year’s flu season is difficult to predict. However, in the past the flu season has lasted 11 weeks in average, but the length of the season can vary up to 20 weeks “which would take us up to April or May”.
While RSV rates have dropped, there can be a double peak with this virus after children return to school, he warned.
Twelve people died of invasive strep A infections last year, including four children, he said. There were 100 cases, including 34 in children, similar to pre-Covid years.
The large surge in Covid cases in China is not expected to impact the epidemiological situation in the European Union, Dr Cuddihy also said. “The variants circulating in China are already circulating in the EU, and as such are not challenging for the immune response of its citizens. In addition, EU citizens have relatively high immunity and vaccination levels.”
Due to “unprecedented” pressures on the health system, staff have been told to make themselves available for weekend work over the next two or three weeks to help relieve overcrowding, the HSE has said.
An increased on-site presence by senior clinical decision-makers is planned for the rest of this month, HSE interim chief executive Stephen Mulvany said on Thursday.
Protocols have been changed to allow non-emergency department doctors assess patients in the ED where there is a significant risk due to delays, he told a media briefing on Thursday.
There were a record number of attendances at emergency department by over-75s last week, Mr Mulvany said, as demand on services reached “unprecedented” levels. The number of over-75s admitted was also a record.
The figures have dropped this week but the numbers on trolleys remains far in excess of the same time last year.
The Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Organisation reported 639 patients on trolleys in EDs or elsewhere on Thursday morning.
That had fallen from the record high of 931 on Tuesday, and from 838 on Wednesday, the second-highest day on record.
Despite apparent progress, Thursday’s figure was 66 per cent above the corresponding day in January last year and comes amid warnings this week from Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly that the overcrowding situation was likely to worsen.
“They are all people, all individual stories, all somebody’s relative,” Prof Alan Irvine of the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association told RTÉ News at One on Thursday. “We are a wealthy European country, we should not have these conditions. It’s maddening really, it’s enraging.”
Of those waiting on trolleys on Thursday morning, 473 were in EDs and 166 elsewhere in wards. In Dublin’s three principal children’s hospitals, 10 patients were on trolleys.
The worst affected were Cork University Hospital (56), Letterkenny University Hospital (51), University Hospital Galway (49) and University Hospital Limerick (49).
However, there were no patients on trolleys in the Midlands Regional Hospitals in Portlaoise and Tullamore, Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan or at University Hospital Waterford.
As health officials scramble to alleviate the strain, tensions have arisen between senior hospital consultants and Mr Donnelly who publicly appealed to them to work weekends in a bid to improve conditions.
“My members have a real difficulty in this because they are working every weekend, every bank holiday,” Prof Irvine said.
“People do not want to be flogged for doing stuff that they are already doing ... that just more of that is going to fix an inherent structural capacity defect.”
He said there were hundreds of patients who were medically fit for discharge but who had no step-down facilities to go to within the community.
