Saturday, 2 April 2022 | 6.1°C Dublin
There are 660 people on trolleys waiting for hospital beds across the nation today, the most since the pandemic began, The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said.
T he INMO said it’s time for the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to “declare a national emergency” in relation to the overcrowding in hospitals.
The hospitals experiencing the most overcrowding were University Hospital Limerick (84), University Hospital Letterkenny (61) and St Vincent’s in Dublin (58).
The INMO are now appealing for some elective, non-emergency, care to be curtailed to ease the numbers in hospital.
The INMO has also said that mask wearing in some crowded indoor settings should return to help with the growing number of Covid-19 cases in hospitals.
“We have seen a 15pc increase of patients on trolleys in the last 24 hours with 660 patients for whom there are no beds,” INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said.
“The Minister for Health needs to intervene and declare this trolley chaos for what it is - a national emergency.
“Our nurses and midwives are burnt out and exhausted. We can’t expect them to be able to provide safe care in environments that are overcrowded while dealing with a highly transmissible airborne virus.”
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said that there have been 7,753 patients without a bed in our hospitals since the mask requirement was dropped last month.
“ESRI research published today shows that two-thirds of people are still wearing masks on public transport and when shopping. If we could increase this number through a re-introduction of mask wearing, it would help ease transmission numbers”.
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Earlier today, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar predicted some elective care would be curtailed in some hospital groups to deal with the number of people in hospital who had Covid-19 and the infection control pressure this puts on hospital staff.
The Tánaiste predicted, though, that the surge in cases and hospitalisations in Ireland will likely “fall off” within weeks.
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