Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan has told Health Minister Stephen Donnelly that there could be up to 1,000 people in hospital by the end of November if Government pushed ahead with lifting all remaining restrictions.
Speaking to the Irish Mirror before Cabinet, Minister Donnelly said he has received updated modelling from NPHET’s Professor Philip Nolan.
He said: “The no policy change position is that if we were essentially to not continue with the restrictions, in other words if we were to remove all restrictions from this Friday, the modelling suggests by the end of November, [we’d] be at about 800 to 1,000 hospital cases with about, which is probably more important, about 150 to 200 of those being in ICU.
“What that would mean is very widespread cancellation of elective surgeries.
“We’ve a lot of children, we’ve a lot of adults that are scheduled for surgery that need that surgery.
“If we ended up at that level of ICU, as has happened in the past, there would have to be quite widespread cancellations.”
Minister Donnelly said Dr Tony Holohan has told him the situation is going to get worse before it gets better.
He added: “The advice from Dr Holohan to me is that it’s going to get worse before it’s going to get better because there has been an increase in cases and we haven’t yet seen that increase in cases translate into hospital and ICU.
“One message I have and it’s emphasised in the letter from the Chief Medical Officer to me, is that for those who have yet to get vaccinated, please get vaccinated.
“Two in every three people in ICU are completely unvaccinated.
“There is about 7% of the adult population unvaccinated.
“That’s putting a huge amount of pressure on the hospital system.”
