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A further 3,138 cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the State.
As of 8am on Friday morning, there are 643 patients in the country's hospitals and 118 of those were in ICU. Earlier, chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE) Paul Reid said almost 200,000 tests for Covid-19 have been carried out over the last week, with GP referrals and those with symptoms being prioritised for testing.
Mr Reid said 82 per cent of people who wanted to be swabbed for the virus over the past seven days had received a test in less than 24 hours.
Hospital Report
More testing centres, staff and support from the Defence Forces were being put in place to respond to the increased demand for Covid-19 testing, he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland on Friday.
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“During the course of the day we do release some appointments [for PCR tests] that were reserved for GPs and may not be utilised,” he said.
“On some occasions it [the appointment] will go into the next day, so I would ask the public to bear with us. These are levels that nobody could forecast or see. We have scaled up to meet them, but it’s a significant demand.”
Damien McCallion, the HSE lead for the Covid-19 vaccination programme, said they have seen “a sustained extremely high demand” for tests in the last number of weeks in particular.
He said the community testing service was established initially to support the delivery of 15,000 tests per day, and that additional measures had adjusted this for peak periods of to up to 20,000 tests per day.
Monday, November 15th, was the system’s busiest day to date in community testing with more than 32,000 referrals scheduled.
“In recent days it has been particularly busy in test centres across the country; however, we monitor test appointment slots continually throughout the day, and slots often do become available later in the day or the following day,” he said.
"We have been working on plans to further increase the volume of Covid-19 testing we can provide to communities. We have agreement in place with a private testing provider – they are operating a testing centre on the HSE's behalf, located at Dublin Airport. This opened on Monday, November 15th, and we are reviewing plans for further testing centres in Cork and Limerick. "
Mr McCallion said the HSE is continuing to recruit additional staff for its test centres and also working to put additional external resources in place to increase testing capacity including potentially other private service providers.
‘Precarious’ situation
Meanwhile, Mr Reid said immediate and urgent action is needed to address the current pressure on hospitals due to the rise in Covid-19 cases.
He said the situation in the country’s larger hospitals has become “quite precarious” and that for the next 14 days the focus will be on urgent care.
In January 10 per cent of Covid patients were in intensive care (ICU) and that level is now 20 per cent, Mr Reid told Newstalk Breakfast.
The situation was very difficult, and the HSE had introduced a range of actions to mitigate it, such as utilising private hospitals for urgent care, cancer and cardiology treatments, he said.
The number of private beds days being accessed weekly by the HSE had risen from 1,000 to between about 2,800 and 3,000 bed days per week.
The HSE was also examining what surge capacity could be drawn upon to create extra ICU beds from the private hospitals.
The extra capacity from private hospitals would provide “some relief”, but the primary focus of the larger hospitals would be on urgent care, he added.
Mr Reid said hospitals would have to make their own judgments and decisions on a site-by-site basis.
The HSE boss defended themanner in which the Irish health system has dealt with the crisis saying that even the best-funded health services across Europe were under pressure at present because of the latest Covid wave.
He acknowledged Ireland did not rank well among OECD countries for ICU beds, but he said that the number had increased by 26 per cent in the past year.
Increasing ICU beds was not just about providing the bed, he said, but also entailed staff to support it.
Each bed required seven highly trained nurses and it was difficult to recruit during a worldwide pandemic.
There were 611 people in hospital with Covid-19 on Thursday night, with 118 of those in ICU. The Mater Hospital in Dublin has the highest number of Covid patients in the country with 65, followed by Beaumont Hospital (55) and Cork University Hospital and University Hospital Limerick (both 47).
Dr Ronan Glynn, deputy chief medical officer, has said their modelling has suggested there could be more than 200,000 cases of Covid-19 in December, though "this is not inevitable".
He said the incidence of Covid-19 in Ireland is very high and rising, with 60,000 cases of the virus recorded in the last fortnight alone.
Dr Glynn said the entire health system is stretched and non-Covid care continues to be severely impacted. He urged people to follow basic public health advice in a video message posted online on Friday.
Complex situation
Chief clinical officer of the HSE Dr Colm Henry has said the situation now is more complex than January, as other services in hospitals have not been stopped and there is more socialising.
The health service was not in danger "per se", he told RTÉ Radio's Today with Claire Byrne show, because the vaccination programme meant people were able to avoid hospitalisation and severe illness. In January for every 1,000 cases, 55 people had been hospitalised, and the corresponding figure was half that now, he said.
Dr Henry appealed to the 7 per cent of the population who are not vaccinated to take the vaccine not just to protect themselves but to protect their families and friends, as the virus was more transmissible.
Dr Henry defended the HSE’s decision to seek a five-day derogation for health care staff to continue working even if a close contact tests positive. The current level of absenteeism was having a huge impact on the health service, he said.
Staff were already receiving booster vaccines, he said, and for those who had not yet received the booster vaccine, the decision on derogation would be made by line managers.
Dr Henry said the National Immunisation Advisory Committee was considering the position of people who had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, following reports on the speed at which its effectiveness waned. However, the booster plan was to focus on the most vulnerable, which was the correct approach, he said.
On the issue of high levels of “no shows” for booster vaccine appointments, Dr Henry acknowledged that repeated texts were being sent, but that the health service was “not giving up”.
When asked if he thought that Ireland would have to impose a lockdown as had been done in Austria, Dr Henry said he hoped not and pointed out that Ireland had a higher vaccination rate and had accelerated the booster campaign.