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02nd Aug 2021

Steady rise in Covid-19 hospitalisations is a “continued cause for concern”, HSE warns

Stephen Porzio

Out of the 26 currently in ICU, four are aged between 19 and 30.

Ireland’s current “steady rise” in Covid-19 hospitalisations is a “continued cause for concern”, the HSE has said.

HSE CEO Paul Reid told Morning Ireland that as of last night, 171 people are in hospital with Covid-19, 26 of which are in ICU.

“We are still concerned about the slowly continuously rising numbers of hospitalised cases,” the HSE chief said.

“Four weeks ago, that was just at 39 people in hospital. It is now 171… Thankfully, we’re beginning to see the daily case numbers kind of hold or plateau but we have seen that steady rise in hospitalisations which is a continued cause of concern for us.”

Asked about the age range of those being hospitalised with the virus, Reid replied: “We haven’t seen a significant change in the age range with the Delta variant of hospitalisations.

“If we’ve 26 people in ICU this morning, literally 22 of those would be in the age bracket 50+ and four would be in the age bracket of 19-30… We are seeing young people equally being hospitalised.

“We’ve always been trying to urge caution on this one because sometimes social media or misinformation can say ‘well if you are in hospital, you’re not really sick with Covid’, well you are.

“We have a lot of people needing high acute care, respiratory support, and sometimes obviously ICU.

“So, a strong message from me this morning is for everybody to please continue to do what we are doing and treating this Delta virus seriously… It is still a very live threat.”

Reid was then asked if the 26 in intensive care were there because they had Covid-19.

“If you look at our hospitalisations overall, it’s always a combination of people who have Covid and a combination of people who may have other illnesses that they’ve been admitted with and then identified as Covid.

“Those 26 people are being treated for Covid in ICU which is quite significant.”

On whether the 22 aged over 50 in intensive care had been vaccinated fully, the CEO responded: “This is a snapshot so it’s important not to take complete trends from this but about 22% of those have been vaccinated.

“So 78% of those in ICU over the weekend haven’t been vaccinated.”

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