The coronavirus surge around the country is ‘going to get a lot worse before it gets better,’ according to an infectious disease expert.
Patients were left waiting in ambulances outside Letterkenny University Hospital last night with no beds available for new patients.
Medics were forced to assess patients in up to seven ambulances outside the hospital with 79 coronavirus patients being treated inside.
Ireland now has one of the highest virus rates in the world, with a 14-day rate of 1,291.2 per 100,000 people.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, infectious disease expert Professor Paddy Mallon from St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin said officials in the North expect figures to double in the coming weeks – with “all the indications” suggesting the same thing will happen here.
“I think things are going to get a lot worse before they get better,” he said.
“I would really appeal to everyone in the country to treat this with the serious it deserves because the worst is yet to come given the numbers we have at the moment.
“The only solution we have to this is with everybody in the community getting back to behaving the way they did in March, when we managed to crush the curve, because this is not about stabilising numbers.
“Stabilising numbers is not going to be good enough. We need to crush the numbers down – otherwise we are going to be in big trouble in the next few weeks.”
“As serious as it gets”
Professor Mallon said the scenes outside Letterkenny Hospital last night “could happen relatively easily in other hospitals around the country, including St Vincent’s.”
“I think all of us in infectious diseases expected January to be a difficult month,” he said.
“But I never thought I would be sitting on here on January 10th listening to almost 7,000 new cases per day coming through.
“This is an effect that has been triggered by Christmas and New Year but the big thing is, we are seeing sustained levels of community transmission.
“While that continues like that, my fears grow because this is not a sustainable number of new cases that will enable our health service to operate properly and that is the simple truth.
“Everyone in the country needs to take that on board. That is as serious as it gets. They need to stay at home where possible. If they are leaving home it should only be for essential reasons it is that serious.
“That is the only solution we have to this problem.”
Health service
Professor Mallon warned that the longer hospitals are let dealing with overwhelming coronavirus patient numbers, the “longer it will take for our health service to recover.”
He said it will be “very difficult” for the country to operate normal healthcare service for as long as daily cases number remain in the thousands.
“The longer that goes on, the bigger the impact it is going to have on other people’s health and the longer it will take for our health service to recover,” he said.
Across the country, there were 1,499 COVID-19 patients in Irish hospitals last night, with 126 people in intensive care.
There were 6,888 new confirmed cases of the virus announced last night with eight further deaths.
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