IRELAND HAS REACHED a “sad milestone” as more than 1,000 people are now in hospital with Covid-19, the CEO of the HSE has said.
Paul Reid said on Twitter that 1,022 Covid-19 patients are currently hospitalised and numbers in ICU stand at 95.
“We’ve reached a sad milestone that nobody wanted to happen,” Reid said.
“It concerns me relaying this. But I do know we will get through a tough time ahead, with your help. At the other side, it will be better.”
109 Covid-19 patients were admitted to hospital in the past 24 hours and there were 61 discharges.
Yesterday, hospitalisation numbers exceeded the previous peak in mid-April during the first wave of the pandemic.
921 people with Covid-19 were in hospital yesterday morning. The previous peak was 881 patients on 15 April last year.
Speaking at a HSE press briefing this afternoon, Reid said there are now 400 acute beds available in Irish hospital today and 21 unoccupied ICU beds.
By mid-morning today there were 95 people in ICU. “Staff are literally fighting to save people’s lives. Sadly in some cases we may not always succeed,” he added.
However, Reid said we are in a better position that we were in the first wave, with adequate stocks of PPE and an increased number of ventilators. He added that good progress has been made with private hospitals.
Vaccines
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today, Stephen Donnelly said the country will receive 110,000 doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine was has been approved for use in the EU.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) gave the green light to the second Covid-19 vaccine for Europe yesterday afternoon.
“We got a provisional schedule late last night on Moderna that says that for quarter one… we are expecting to receive 110,000 vaccines, and we hope there’s more,” the minister said.
“My hope is that we’re looking to see that [the AstraZeneca vaccine] gets authorised very quickly. And then there’s another one which hasn’t been spoken about much which is the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.”
He described this as “an interesting one” as it requires only one dose and is “easy to apply”.
He said he hopes Ireland is “vaccinating at a reasonable scale on both AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson also in quarter one”.
Prior to the Moderna vaccine approval, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that up to 135,000 people will be fully vaccinated by the end of February.
In the first three months of this year, Ireland is set to receive about 360,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 110,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine.
Both vaccines require two doses for each person.
“On top of that 470,000 doses, it is my hope that we will also have significant quantities of AstraZeneca and possibly Johnson and Johnson as well,” Donnelly said.
With reporting by Michelle Hennessey and Garreth MacNamee
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