Hospital officials expressed concern that HSE had been too late in implementing the winter plan and would struggle to recruit the necessary staff for the extra beds it had promised. Concerns have been raised following reports that Level 5 restrictions could once again be imposed in Ireland.
The National Public Health Emergency Team had yesterday recommended to the government for a Level 5 proposal to impose a nationwide lockdown in the view of extraordinary accidents in the coming days.
Although it was initially suspected that the government was unlikely to accept the NPHET’s recommendation, there were later indications that it might be considered.
If the Level 5 restrictions come into force, everyone will have to stay in their homes. Only essentials will be allowed within 5km.
The NPHET made the recommendation to the government in the wake of the growing number of COVID cases in Ireland. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of reported cases in recent weeks. Yesterday, 364 new cases were confirmed in the country and 614 were confirmed the day before yesterday.
Not only the rising number of cases every day, but also the spike in cases in hospitals are of the greater concern. Yesterday alone, 134 confirmed cases were registered in the hospital, of which 21 patients are in the ICU.
Hospital officials say they are concerned that current hospital beds, facilities and staff may not be sufficient when the winter illness is accompanied by COVID.
HSE’s Chief Operating Officer Ann O’Connor stated that they are targeting an additional 12,500 staff as a part of HSE’s winter plan.
Ms. O’Connor said the goal is to recruit 4,987 frontline workers by 2020 alone, of which 2,760 will be core staff and the rest will focus on testing and tracing. The list of frontline workers includes doctors, nurses, home support staff and carers.
O’Connor said HSE plans to open 251 acute beds in the last three months of 2020. But HSE did not specify how many ICU beds will be opened this year and how many staff will be recruited for those beds, she said.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett had said that there are now 280 ICU beds across the country. Boyd Barrett had previously said that HSE needed to make improvements to make the roles of health workers more effective.
“They have to immediately eliminate pay inequality for new entrants that is a huge barrier to recruitment of nurses and healthcare workers generally. They have to dramatically change their attitude and value nurses and healthcare workers by paying them properly,” Boyd Barrett said.
Boyd added that, despite the promise of an additional 17 ICU beds in the Winter Plan, there are fewer critical care beds than there were in April for health care. He said that this is an indication that the country is heading for the second wave of COVID-19.
The delivery of acute beds and the staffing of those beds will be important for ICUs, said Dr. Motherway, an intensive care consultant at University Hospital Limerick. She added that both the critical care beds and the general ward beds need to be expanded.
Meanwhile, David Cullinane, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on health, expressed concern that HSE’s winter plan was too late and that HSE would not be able to provide extra beds this year.
HSE CEO Paul Reid acknowledged that HSE’s plan to hire more staff as part of the winter plan will be highly challenging. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, HSE has recruited 150 additional consultants and 1,500 nurses. But during RTÉ’s Today, Reid said it wasn’t going to be enough.