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The number of people in hospital with Covid-19 has continued to drop, falling to 1,368 on Wednesday morning, according to the latest figures from the HSE.
There are 205 patients with the virus in intensive care (ICU). Cork University Hospital and Waterford University Hospital have 96 Covid-19 cases, the highest number in the country, followed by St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin (94).
The HSE’s daily operations figures show there are 38 ICU beds available for adults and six for children.
The president of the Intensive Care Society of Ireland, Dr Colman O’Loughlin said “things turned out significantly worse than we anticipated,”.
He told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland about the problems experienced by the health system in recent weeks.
The increase in Covid-19 cases following Christmas caused stress for the hospital system, he said. Covid-19 was “a preventable disease”, if everyone had “held the line” the numbers would be far less.
Examining what had happened over Christmas was for the future, but it could not be allowed to happen again, he warned.
The number of deaths reported on Tuesday had been “very sobering, but not totally unexpected”.
A further 101 deaths of Covid-19 patients were reported by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) on Tuesday, the highest daily figure recorded during the pandemic. The deaths included that of a 19-year-old, one of the youngest victims of Covid-19. There have now been 3,418 Covid-19 deaths in total in the Republic.
Nphet also reported 879 confirmed cases of the disease, bringing to 198,424 the total number of cases.
Dr O’Loughlin said there was now a pattern of sicker patients coming into ICU and staying longer. The average length of stay in the last wave had been 10 to 14 days, but it was longer this time, and the degree of lung injury was more severe.
Dr O’Loughlin said it was a different pattern of disease and far more challenging, but there was not data available to tell if new variants of the virus were responsible for this.
On Tuesday evening, Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer, said the high mortality we are experiencing as a country at the moment was related to the surge of infection of several weeks ago, with hospitalisations and admissions to ICU following as a direct result.
“Although we have seen great improvement in the level of infection being reported, we have a long way to go and incidence needs to decline much further,” he said.
“The best way to honour those who have died from Covid-19, and those who loved them or provided care for them, is to follow the public health advice. Stay at home unless absolutely necessary, and encourage your friends, family and colleagues to do the same.”