‘True scale of flu season yet to emerge’ as trolley numbers increase significantly in 24 hours

The true scale of the challenge to the health system posed by the current influenza season will become clear over the next seven to 10 days as the level of infection caused by socialising over Christmas and New Year becomes clear, according to the chair of the Irish Medical Organisation’s GP committee.

“The last week was busy but it wasn’t brutal, we’ve had the buffer of having no other patients to see,” said Dr Denis McCauley on Sunday. “Next week will be a different story because it will be the normal overlay of normal post-Christmas issues. And then there will be the respiratory workload as well.

“You will be able to define how January is going to be by sort of the 10th or 11th. All the mixing has been happening over the past three, four, five days and then you have another five or six days for it to take off. If it’s not mayhem by Wednesday of next week then it’s not going to be too bad.”

His comments come as the number of people on trolleys in Irish hospitals has increased significantly over the last 24 hours, with 442 people waiting on a bed at 8am on Sunday morning.

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According to the HSE’s own figures, more than half of those people, 246, were waiting more than nine hours and 99 were waiting more than 24 hours.

Those numbers were all substantially up on the corresponding numbers for Saturday when the organisation had reported 339 on trolleys.

To date, Dr McCauley said, “this is not the worst flu season we’ve ever seen but the body of sick people that there are, the hospital system just isn’t able to look after them.

“As GPs, we’re there to help with the assessment of the patients, whether it’s in surgeries during the day or in the out of hours services but at the end of that assessment process, there’s just a body of morbidity that the hospitals can’t actually accept… the field is completely flooded so it can’t take any more water.”

Citing the example of Letterkenny University Hospital Dr McCauley, who is based in Stranorlar, said “the patient flow is, I think, characterised as green, yellow, red and black with black meaning that the patient flow has completely fallen down and it’s in code black 96 per cent of the time.

“So, you look after as many as you can, outside the hospital you give a few IV antibiotics to prevent them going into the hospital. But ultimately, there are a group that have that have to go in. And that’s really what’s happening. Capacity in the hospital system isn’t there while the capacity in general practice is just teetering.”

Dr McCauley said that the provision of additional resources by the HSE to help keep GP practices open while the number of flu and Covid infections are high was welcome but “there is a total acceptance in the IMO and the HSE actually that we are we are in fifth gear with the choke completely pulled out”.

It was difficult to say what the response to the HSE’s request for doctors to continue seeing patients into the evening and to open practices on Saturday has been at this stage as, he said, “they are working on past six quite commonly and I think that that will continue in January but this extra resource will be helpful to them as they look to keep their surgeries open”.

In a statement, the HSE said “there was an increase in National Ambulance Service activity yesterday and whilst we would expect to see that on New Year’s Eve, we are seeing heightened activity regarding respiratory illness”.

A spokesperson said the organisation was also encountering “significant staff challenges in provision of services” due to the number of staff absent has a result of Covid-19, flu and other viruses.

The number of people with Covid in hospital remained stable over the weekend with the HSE putting the number at 678 at 8am on Sunday morning, up just one from the same time on Saturday.

Of those, 25 were in ICU, up significantly on the figures for a period towards the end of last year but just about a tenth of the peak numbers reached in January of 2021.