ICU DOCS FEAR ‘A SUMMER OF MORE CASES’ OF COVID-19
ICU doctors are ‘concerned about a summer of more cases’ as the Department of Health makes preparations to build up surge capacity to deal with the steep rise in Covid-19 cases.
Dr Enda O’Connor, ICU lead at St James’ Hospital in Dublin, said this weekend that most of the Covid patients he is seeing are people who have not been vaccinated.
He said the overall numbers in ICU remain low, and it is hard to say if the age profile of patients seriously ill from Covid is noticeably younger than before.
Dr O’Connor told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘The ones that we’re seeing are unvaccinated people, there is also a tendency to see people who very recently had a vaccination and they haven’t had enough time to see a full immune response.
‘Overall, a rise in figures would mean we are concerned but what we’re seeing now in terms of the figures shows the importance of the vaccination programme and that it’s working.
‘If you go back to earlier in the pandemic, 1,000 cases would translate into high hospitalisations and high ICU numbers. Now we’re seeing a rate of about 7% hospitalised cases and 2% of cases in ICU, which is very similar to the UK.
‘The issue is we don’t know this time around what cases will go up to. But the ICU community is concerned about a summer of more cases, which was acknowledged by the Tánaiste this week.’
When asked if there has been a noticeable shift from older to younger patients in ICU, Dr O’Connor said: ‘It’s difficult to make any statistical inferences when we’re dealing with small numbers of patients. It’s probably a little early, I’d suspect, to get a really good picture of what the intensive care patient looks like in this fourth wave.’
HSE chief Paul Reid acknowledged on Friday there has been an increase in GP referrals of younger Covid patients. However, the HSE was not able to provide a breakdown of the age profile of the 75 hospital Covid cases and the 22 ICU ones.
HSE chief operations officer Anne O’Connor said the health service is preparing for a surge in cases as it reaches capacity across most sectors due to busier than usual emergency departments, increased numbers of patients who may have deferred treatment throughout the pandemic and delays relating to the cyberattack.
At this time of year the HSE would usually expect to have about 400 available beds, but just 140 are available.
There are also 31 available ICU beds, and the HSE has signalled it is possible planned medical procedures may be deferred in the coming weeks in the face of further Covid hospitalisations.
Dr O’Connor praised the Government for the two-phase plan to bolster ICU bed numbers, which have increased from 255 to 305, which he said has put us ‘in a better position’.
He added: ‘I think there’s a recognition that for the health system to work well, and to be able to cope with these kind of unexpected surges in activity, places like emergency departments and ICUs do have to have adequate capacity to be able to cope with that.
‘We can’t all run at certain 95% capacity because it leaves no room for the unexpected surge of activity.’