There were 38 Covid patients on site at University Hospital Waterford as of 8pm on Monday, March 7th.
It comes as over 20,000 cases have been reported nationally since Saturday – with over 800 people hospitalised with the virus.
Two of the patients at UHW are currently in intensive care units.
The surge in cases both nationally and locally comes with St. Patrick’s weekend and a double bank holiday on the horizon.
With restrictions regarding mask-wearing no longer mandatory, a Tramore GP says people should be vigilant, but not massively worried about current case figures.
Austin Byrne spoke on Deise Today with Damien Tiernan, and said it is only a small percentage of people who are suffering from serious illness.
“Thankfully, people aren’t getting all that sick from it. For most people, it is a relatively mild illness. There are some people, a 10-15%, who for whatever reason, possibly a different variant, are getting quite sick with significant flu-like symptoms. Unfortunately, the hospital situation has picked up in the past week or so.”
Dr. Byrne says its inevitable that cases will rise given the increase in social mixing, and he has advised people to take caution where they feel it is necessary.
“I think we should be vigilant. We had hoped but we openly acknowledged that we didn’t feel that it was going to go away – and I don’t think it is. I think we’ll be OK for the summer, but for now hospital cases will continue to rise. Our hospital doubling time for the minute for beds is probably only 4-5 days at the current rate. That doesn’t mean it’s going to continue like that. Socially, we are heading into a St. Patrick’s Day weekend – there will be a lot of mixing. We will see a surge from that.”
Ultimately, the same advices we have followed since March 2020 are what will curb the spread of Covid.
“We know what we can do. We have a phased approach that has helped things in the past. Hopefully, we won’t go anywhere near the same level of restrictions that we have had.”
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