Dr Catherine Motherway said intensive care capacity in this country needs to be doubled and more permanent capacity needed to be built but this could not be done overnight.
Chief Executive of the HSE Paul Reid said he was concerned about the capacity of the service for the coming winter. He said they would need extra capacity this winter in a way they had not needed before. She said the preferred option for the HSE was to have as much capacity available as possible. And she said a decision would be made at the end of June if the HSE would continue using the facility past October.This week 20,500 samples had been taken and tests were taking on average less than two days from swabbing to results. Of the tests, 86% were completed within three days.
Mr Reid said the cost of dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic for the health service was so far around €400m. Ms O'Connor said 19 long-term residential facilities still required significant supports and they were at significant risk. There were 209 still deployed to residential care and support to residential care continued to be a key focus.
From that article... Of those patients in intensive care, 87% had an underlying disease - mainly cardiovascular, obesity, or hypertension related conditions. Of those who died, she said 99% had an underlying disease. Same story everywhere.
The HSE were obviously not capable of dealing with the emergency as they had to lease private hospitals,hotels etc at astronomical costs to the public, they had to redeploy ppl to frontline services deprived of proper staffing, leaving vital services closed down,costing lives.