His comments come as 3,024 new Covid-19 cases were confirmed on Thursday.
HSE CEO Paul Reid has said daily, increasing levels of Covid-19 transmission in the community are causing “significant and unrelenting pressure” on the health system overall.
He made the comments during a HSE briefing on Thursday afternoon as 3,024 new cases of the virus were confirmed in Ireland.
As of 8am on Thursday, 458 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 90 are in ICU.
“We’ve been here many times over the past 18, 20 months talking about the situation in our hospitals and generally related to Covid-19,” he said.
“There’s an obvious risk that the more we continue to talk about and come back to talk about it, it begins to become normalised.
“So, I do want to stress that today, there’s nothing normal in the situation that we’re in, nothing normal when we end up at different phases having almost a third of our ICU beds taken up with Covid patients.
“And indeed as of today… just 90 Covid patients in ICU and 458 Covid positive patients in hospital.”
The @hpscireland has today been notified of 3,024* confirmed cases of #COVID19.
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.
— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) November 4, 2021
Reid stated that a “significant number” of Covid-19 patients in hospital are receiving advanced respiratory support outside of intensive care.
“There’s a high level of sickness from the patients that we are treating in hospital,” he noted.
Reid also stressed that though Covid-19 hospital figures may be lower than their January peak, the situation is different as back then the health service was “just treating urgent care and Covid patients”.
On how the health service was currently coping, he said: “We’re meeting the Covid demands that come at us but we’re not meeting the demands that we want to get to… which is a lot of our elective care and very long and impactful waiting lists for people for care.”
Reid added that due to the daily, increasing levels of Covid-19 transmission in the community, many aspects of the health system are “under particular distress”.
“We are at a level of transmission in the community that has forced many aspects of our response of our health care system overall into surge responses,” he explained.
According to Reid, GPs, the testing and tracing system, public health teams, hospitals and ICUs are “dealing with a very disproportionate set of demands”.
This is as 3,500 health staff right now are out “through sickness with Covid or as symptomatic close contacts of Covid cases”, which he said is also putting “huge pressure” on staff.
“The actions of the health service alone won’t get us out of this current situation,” Reid said.
“If cases continue to rise, there comes a time when no additional testing, tracing, vaccination, hospital beds or ICU will help to turn the tide.
“A range of actions are needed by all of us to help turn this tide and to turn it soon.”
To help combat rising Covid figures in hospital, Reid called on members of the public that are unvaccinated against Covid-19 to receive their vaccine.
He also urged the public to continue to follow public health measures, including mask-wearing and social distancing.
Main image via Leah Farrell / Photocall Ireland
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
