The healthcare system "cannot withstand" a major surge that leads to serious illness and hospitalisation.
The Chief Clinical Officer of the Health Service Executive has warned that the Irish healthcare service is under considerable pressure due to Covid-19 as the winter months kick in.
Following the latest figures released by the Department of Health, 500 people are in hospital with the virus, 93 of whom are in ICU.
This represents the highest figures seen in Ireland associated with the virus since February of 2021.
Speaking on Sunday's edition of
This Week on RTÉ Radio 1, Dr Colm Henry was asked precisely how much strain the hospital system is under right now.
"We are under pressure, there's no doubt about it," he began.
"There's maybe two ways of looking at this – looking at the rise in the number of cases and without doubt, since the easing of social restrictions, people are mixing more together socially, they've gone back to the workplace, despite the very high levels of uptake of vaccination there are still people out there that haven't been vaccinated who are every bit more at risk from a version of the virus that's even more transmissible than the one we were used to at the beginning of this year.
"So, cases are going up," Henry continued.
"What is somewhat reassuring is the conversion of those cases into harm is blunted. To give you some idea; over the past 14 days, of the total number of cases about 1.7% were hospitalised, 0.7% admitted to ICU. Now, that's half the level of conversion we would have seen in previous surges.
"That protection is a protection we're seeing from the vaccine. For all the criticism that people say about vaccines; they afford great protection from serious illness, there's no doubt about. They may not afford such significant protection against transmission."
Henry noted that a problem with hospitals as seen in previous surges is that the healthcare system was delivering care tailored around Covid – cancelling out-patient surgeries and curtailing other services to prioritise the virus.
"Now, we're heading into a winter where we're delivering unscheduled care, emergency care, scheduled care, catching up with waiting lists – and to look at our intensive care [units], for example, 93 of our beds are taken up by Covid patients," he said.
"That leaves very little room outside [of] Covid for emergency trauma care and any additional elective capacity. Hospitals alone cannot forget these basic measures.
"Vaccines alone, testing and tracing alone, and hospitals and healthcare alone, cannot withstand a surge of Covid-19 if they convert into serious illness and hospitalisation."
Henry's comments echo those of
HSE CEO Paul Reid, who said that he anticipates "one of the worst winters we've faced in many years" during an interview last weekend.
