HSE says dozens of surgeries being cancelled every week due to rising Covid numbers

Tánaiste Varadkar has said cases will reach roughly 4000 in the coming days.

Rising Covid-19 numbers are leading to roughly ten surgeries being cancelled every week in hospitals around the country, HSE Director of Acute Hospitals has said. Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, Director Liam Woods said: "Ten per site per week was roughly what we were getting about a week and a half back... that was across about 21 hospital sites. "Covid is very much interrupting the normal service delivery and has done that sadly for almost the last two years now. "We're seeing an increase in ED attendance that’s well above the demographic. That's been driven by difficulties in accessing care in the community." Mr. Woods the growth in attendance is mostly seen in the over 75s category. He added that there is a "high need for care" and the plan is to "grow capacity to meet the demand". "I think we also need to recognise that the demand on the emergency departments, independent of what’s happening with Covid, is also now very high. "So the pressure on the system, both to do the normal planned surgery, but also to treat people as they present at the front door of the hospital, is also very high."

Thousands of beds are currently being used in the private hospital systems weekly for diverted emergency services.

The HSE has invested in 1,100 extra beds since the start of the pandemic and the number of intensive care beds had risen from 255 to 300, according to Mr. Woods.

“That’s going to need to continue. We’re going to need to meet the growing health care demand," he said.

Mr. Woods' comments come just one day after HSE chief executive Paul Reid said there is "significant and unrelenting pressure" on the hospital system.

Meanwhile, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said Covid-19 case numbers will reach 4,000 in the coming days, partly because of a backlog of unreported cases. Als speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Varadkar said the situation is "fragile, but it is stable". "We will see cases hit around 4,000 today or tomorrow," he said. "They’ve been heading that way and there’s a backlog of unverified cases." The number of new cases of Covid-19 cases topped over 3,000 for the third day in a row on Thursday, with 458 people in hospital. Main Image Credit: Leah Farrell/Rolling News.ie