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Five of the 19 maternity units in hospitals around the country are not fully compliant with the guidelines on allowing partners attend scans and births, according to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly.
In a series of tweets this morning, Mr Donnelly said he had received a report from the Health Service Executive, which found that five hospitals were not compliant.
He said these are St Luke s Hospital in Kilkenny, Wexford General Hospital, South Tipperary General Hospital, Waterford University Hospital and Letterkenny University Hospital in Donegal.
Partners have been unable to attend anomaly scans at St. Luke s Hospital in Kilkenny due to space constraints, which is due to be resolved by next week.
The worst-hit hospitals are University Hospital Limerick, Letterkenny University Hospital in Donegal, Cork University Hospital, the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar and South Tipperary General Hospital.
The union warned that staff being redeployed to administer Covid-19 vaccines is causing day services to close or be scaled back, putting extra pressure on emergency departments.
Frontline staff have also voiced concern that infection control and social distancing is compromised when patients are on trolleys in corridors.
The INMO has said it is calling for urgent national intervention in University Hospital Limerick in particular, along with a strategy to reduce the volume of staff being redeployed for vaccinations.
The number of people hospitalised with Covid-19 this week is likely to reach double the numbers at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic here, HSE chief Paul Reid has warned.
There had been 100 extra hospitalisations over the previous 24 hours.
In addition, eight new deaths were reported.
Of the cases reported yesterday, 2,088 were in Dublin, 862 in Cork, 469 in Limerick, 405 in Wexford, 320 in Waterford and the remaining cases were spread across all other counties.
“Early this week, we will likely be at double what we had in the peak of last year,” Mr Reid said yesterday, adding there was concern at the rising trend.
He said there were 37 vacant adult ICU beds and 11 vacant pediatric ICU beds across the health system yesterday morning.
Speaking on RTE’s
This Week, he said a ‘surge’ agreement reached with private hospitals to access beds and give further capacity for patients had already been triggered.