The chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE) has said action is needed from the public to alleviate pressure on the health service, as it emerged that 4,400 HSE staff were off work due to Covid-19.

“Our health system alone cannot get us out of this,” Paul Reid said on Thursday, adding that it was now up to the public to control the situation through collective individual actions.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s News at One, Mr Reid said no health system in the world could cope with a third of its bed capacity being taken up with Covid-19 patients.

Hospital Report

He said better resourced health systems elsewhere in Europe were also under pressure.

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Nearly a third of intensive care beds in the State were occupied by Covid-19 patients, with a further 250 people on advanced respiratory support on non-invasive ventilators, he explained.

Thursday’s figure of 551 Covid patients in hospitals was up 20 per cent in one week, he said. There had also been an increase in seasonal and respiratory viruses while emergency departments had experienced a 20 per cent increase on pre-pandemic levels.

Hospitals were under significant strain, but outbreaks in nursing homes and congregated settings were down and this was probably due to the vaccine booster scheme, Mr Reid said.

He said the rollout of the booster scheme to healthcare workers would hopefully alleviate the pressure caused by HSE staff absences.

When asked about the Winter Plan, Mr Reid said it would be published “very shortly”, possibly next week, as the budget is being finalised. Aspects of the Winter Plan would include a range of initiatives such as increased access for general practitioners to diagnostic equipment, a greater role for the ambulance service, community intervention teams and access in emergency departments to diagnostic equipment to allow for triaging.

Mr Reid also defended the contact tracing system. He said that 184,000 laboratory tests had been completed last week, an average of 20,000 per day, with 25,000 completed in one day. There was strong public support in the form of responses to the automated text system for listing close contacts, he added.

Mr Reid said the booster campaign was making good progress with the over-80s cohort likely to be completed in the next week, and the over-60s campaign had begun at vaccination centres.

“We really need to relieve pressure on the health system. Boosters will be part of it, test and trace will be part of it, but we really all need to play our part in reducing the virus in circulation,” he said.

‘Missed opportunity’

Earlier on Thursday, however, immunology expert Prof Christine Loscher said Ireland was "on the back foot" and missed an opportunity with booster vaccines.

Prof Loscher said the booster campaign should have been rolled out as soon as it was approved by the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac), but it did not begin for 2½ weeks.

“Niac made that decision and nothing happened. They should have been ready,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.

Prof Loscher's comments came after it emerged that the number of new cases is rising among all age groups, except for over-80s, according to deputy chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn.

Mr Glynn said a fall in the number of cases among people aged over 80 was a positive benefit of the booster programme; by October 11th, 50 per cent of people in this group had received a booster and case numbers started falling.

He said he was “hopeful and optimistic” of further positive benefit as more people receive boosters.

However, Prof Loscher said the country is "on the back foot", pointing out that 65 per cent of people going to hospital with Covid were over the age of 55. The majority of people aged over 60 had received the AstraZeneca vaccine which was now waning, she said.

Young people and children

Prof Loscher said that young people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were still protected, as that vaccine was similar to the Pfizer shot in terms of the length of time it was active before waning. They were also likely to have received their vaccine more recently, she added.

However, Prof Loscher said young people were also back at work and at college so they were “life mixing”, not necessarily “social mixing”. As a result it was difficult to decipher what was happening in their age cohort.

On Covid in schools, Prof Loscher said antigen testing had an important role to play. She said in cases where there was an outbreak in a class, antigen tests should be given to parents who would then test their children to see if they could go to school.

As children were not vaccinated, the virus “is having a field day” with that age group, she added, and antigen testing would be a means to monitor what was happening with that cohort.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said on Wednesday that Nphet is looking at operationalising the use of antigen testing in school outbreaks but is not contemplating the widespread use of this testing across schools.

Mr Reid said HSE teams are at present assessing the most appropriate use of antigen tests in school settings: “We will be presenting options to the Minister next week on areas where it can add value.”

On the issue of consultants and the controversial contract revealed recently, Mr Reid said that at present consultants were being interviewed on the basis of existing contracts. The aim for the HSE was to recruit more consultants.