Over 500 patients waiting on trolleys in Irish hospitals

Kenneth Fox

There were 506 people without a bed in Irish hospitals on Monday morning, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation's (INMO) latest Trolley Watch figures.

There were 355 patients are on trollies in Emergency Departments across the country, while 151 are on trollies in wards elsewhere in the hospitals.

Letterkenny University Hospital is the worst affected in the country, with 66 people on trollies. Meanwhile, 51 people are without a bed at University Hospital Limerick.

It comes as the situation facing Ireland’s healthcare services is matching the worst-case scenarios, HSE chief executive Stephen Mulvany said last week.

“Currently, we’re matching or exceeding our most pessimistic model, which, as we said before, is very concerning,” he said on Thursday.

“Flu is already at levels that make this an exceptional season, plus we still have significantly high levels of Covid and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus).”

He added that as of January 7th, flu was seen to be continuing to rise, and that they could not yet predict when it would peak.

“We will continue to deal with high levels of flu and other viruses through February and likely into March,” he added.

HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry said previous models had dealt with one virus and “very predictable behaviours”.

“So it was certainly easier to model against one virus which had a fairly predictable rate of behaviour and also, marking that against different ways of behaviour of the population which were reduced down to very simple things because of social restrictions at the time,” he said.