Saolta chief executive Tony Canavan has said the impact of the Omicron wave has forced the hospital group to introduce a new ban on visitors at its six hospitals as it tries to cope with the temporary loss of some 1,200 staff to Covid-related leave.
The figure represents 11 per cent of the total workforce at the centres operated by the group.
“It was really quite alarming. In the middle of last week we had a quick look at the numbers post-Christmas and across the whole group there were a couple of hundred staff out on Covid-related leave at that time.
Hospital Report
“Between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week and the end of the week that number escalated quite considerably,” he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
The escalation in the number of Covid patients has led the group to introduce a ban on visitors.
“It’s a very significant move, all of our hospitals had moved back over the course of the end of last year towards allowing visiting on a more normal basis, with some restrictions in place. But the escalation in the number of Covid patients in our hospitals has caused us to have a look at that again.
“This morning we’ve 162 patients across the regions who are Covid positive and that has risen very rapidly from just before Christmas, on Christmas Eve we had only 53. The situation has deteriorated quite quickly and quite badly.
“The arrangements in place are quite restrictive, we have some exceptions of course visiting will be facilitated on compassionate grounds, for example with a person nearing end of life, who need to have family around them.
“We also have separate arrangements in place in maternity departments particularly for nominated support partners.”
Mr Canavan said that the group was seeing a significant and rapid growth in patients in ordinary hospital beds, on hospital wards — there had also been “some shift and change in ICUs where the sickest patients are cared for”.
“We’ve 12 patients in ICUs currently that are Covid-19 positive,” he said.
“This time last year pretty much all our services were closed down and we were focusing just on Covid-19 patients, now emergency departments are very busy, our wards are busy, unfortunately we are returning again to patients awaiting admission on trolleys in our emergency departments.
“There is a much greater throughput of people through our hospitals, so our hospitals are extremely busy any way and the impact of Covid-19 on top of that is really very significant.
“Every available space that we have is being used on all hospital sites. But a space or a bed is only of use for patients if you have staff to look after them and that’s becoming a problem on some sites.
“Ambulance delays are a feature again unfortunately particularly in areas like Letterkenny, Sligo and Galway, where we have significant delays in excess of an hour on average for ambulances to offload their patients.
“Staff stretch themselves to ensure patients are looked after, but there are some situations where wards are closed and we can’t admit patients as we don’t have staff.
“We’ve restricted all elective work across the group to the bare minimum and only the most important cases are getting in at this stage — they would be cancer cases or time-sensitive cases.
“Staff are tired and worn out — it’s been two long years of trying to cope with Covid. There was a sense of optimism that came with the vaccination programme, some of that is still there — we would be in a much worse place if we didn’t have the vaccination programme.
“We all acknowledge that there are significant deficits in our health service particularly in terms of access — and we do need to address those, we see them in our emergency departments and in our waiting lists for elective procedures long before we had Covid,” he said