No new Covid restrictions recommended by Nphet to Government

The State’s public health team has not recommended the imposition of any additional Covid-19 restrictions to Government.

The National Public Health Emergency Team met on Thursday to review the epidemiological situation in the State and to consider whether any additional measures were needed amid record Covid-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant.

Two sources said the team has recommended a continuance of current measures, potentially until the end of the month.

Sources have also said changes to the isolation period for close contacts may not be made until after the peak of the Omicron wave.

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A daily record of 23,817 new cases of Covid-19 was confirmed in the State on Thursday.

The new cases were reported by the Department of Health which said there were now 941 Covid-19 patients in the State’s hospitals, 90 of them in ICU.

Impact on HSE

At least 8,500 health service staff are currently off work due to Covid-19 infection or being a close contact, according to HSE chief executive Paul Reid.

This amounts to one in eight staff in the health service, and includes 3,000 nurses and midwives and 1,500 staff working in patient care.

But he warned the true number could be twice this manual count, due to the acceleration of infections over the past week.

Mr Reid was speaking during a HSE media briefing on Thursday.

Healthcare sites are estimating average staff absence rates at about 12 per cent – equivalent to 14,000-15,000 staff, HSE chief operating officer Anne O’Connor told the briefing. Absence rates vary across sites, with some recording rates of 20 per cent, she said. At the National Ambulance Service, 260 people are currently unavailable for work.

Mr Reid described the current phase of the pandemic as “very uncertain in terms of the impact of Omicron”.

The HSE remains on high alert and “we are seeing literally persistent stress across the system overall”, he said.

There are “early strong indications” that the level of illness with the Omicron variant may not be as severe as with the Delta variant, and the impact on ICU so far has been less severe, he said.

However, the health system remains under extreme pressure and the impact on staff was “very hard”.

Hospital

At 941, the number of Covid-19 patients in hospital is up 65 per cent since last week and 140 per cent in two weeks. The average time Covid-19 patients spend in hospital has remained the same as earlier in the pandemic, Mr Reid said.

The numbers of virus patients in critical care have remained generally stable, according to Mr Reid.

Ms O’Connor said many hospitals were experiencing “congestion”, particularly model-three facilities such as Letterkenny, Portlaoise, Mullingar and Kilkenny.

There were four new Covid outbreaks in hospitals last week and five in long-term care facilities, officials said.

One-quarter of all Covid-19 cases in the past 12 months have occurred since Christmas Day, HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry told the briefing.

About 6,500 children aged five to 11 have been vaccinated so far amid the extension of the vaccine programme to this age group, and 70,000 have been registered to be vaccinated. Mr Reid said all of the 10,000 children with underlying conditions will have received vaccine appointments by Friday.

Dr Henry said there was “no doubt” Covid cases were being ascertained, and there could be “one or two” more cases for every case that is being picked up.

Booster programme

Mr Reid acknowledged the pace of the vaccination and boosting programme has slowed since Christmas.

More than 100,000 immunocompromised people will be called for a fourth shot in January, he said.

IT staff in the HSE are developing a facility that would allow people to register positive antigen test results online and hope to have a solution ready by the end of next week, he said.

Dr Ross Morgan, a respiratory consultant at Beaumont Hospital, said doctors had seen a number of families with Covid-19 in ICU, including people in their 30s and 40s and parents.

The signals on Omicron are somewhat better than with previous variants of the virus, but “unfortunately the Covid pneumonia is the same as it looked last year”, he said.