"We are getting into a very serious situation."
Non-urgent hospital care will be cancelled from this week in order to free up capacity in hospitals as the Covid-19 situation around the country deteriorates, the CEO of the HSE has said.
Paul Reid said that Ireland could be seeing 7,000 cases per day in the coming days and said the situation in hospitals is returning to how it was in March and April last year.
"We will be taking actions this week to reduce and in most cases eliminate non-urgent care across our hospital system,” Reid told
Newstalk Breakfast.
“We have to create capacity during this week, we have to reduce the footfall in our hospitals and we have to reduce the risk because of the spread.”
He said that the hospital system still has beds available, around 50 ICU beds and 500 beds, but explained the trajectory of the virus means that there could be 2,000 hospitalisations in January which the system would be unable to cope with.
He added: "The trajectory we’re looking at would tell us within January we could be rising to 1,500-2,000 hospitalised cases, and a rise in ICU from anywhere from around 250 to 430. That’s how serious it is."
Reid also appeared on RTÉ's Morning Ireland on Monday and said he expected to see 6,000 cases confirmed on Monday evening.
As of 8am on Monday morning, there are 744 patients with Covid-19 in hospital and the latest figures show 65 people are in ICU. There have been 12 additional admissions to ICU in the last 24 hours.
4,962 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in Ireland on Sunday, which marked the highest number of daily cases in Ireland so far in the pandemic.
