I’d like to know the answer to that
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“Recent funding in March of this year from HSE/Department of Health brought our base adult critical care bed numbers from 257 adult beds (197 level 3 and 60 level 2) to 285 (239 level 3 and 46 level 2), still far short of the HSE own recommendations (by 145 beds). This is insufficient to deal with the additional high numbers of critically ill patients with Covid-19 in addition to our usual cohort of critically ill patients.”
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Was that a temporary increase after the deal done with the private hospitals?
Not sure. Suggests it was not.
No I know they’ve added something like 10 beds in limerick to ICU. Now it was by taking over another ward so I’m not sure where the people that were there are supposed to go
Yeah we had over 500 available beds during Covid, which could stretch to 800 if required.
Would there be any point? Sure it’ll never even get close to as bad as last time?
He left me out as well but I’m biding my time to wield the dagger
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The max number of beds occupied during Covid was 160 for Covid patients in the second week of April.
After other non Covid patients were considered, we still had around 220 free beds up to that 500. Plus 300 or so additional beds available for surges.
In reality Ireland’a health system coped quite well with Covid. The issue was nursing homes and poor general PPE.
The issue with the ICU beds is that the number “available” changes day to day (depending on staffing) and the media just report the HSE statement on beds free. The total capacity isn’t actually reported (that’s also dynamic), nor is the surge capacity.
The HSE’s daily reports are all available for the likes of Richard Boyd Barrett to review. They are a pretty useless organisation generally but the data is there.
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ICU beds didn’t fill because they left the old to die in nursing homes. An abject failure on our part, but to be fair they were waiting for a surge that never came
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Ah for fucks sake @Locke. You’re not a child. Hes a filthy corrupt FF scumbag who served in cabinet in the worst 2 governments in the history of the state. Google Michael Martin wife bank account donation.
He’s also a fucking idiot going on his current performance. Being walked on by his government ‘partners’ and attacked by his own backbenches.
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If you go on a ventilator in your 80s you’re most likely not coming off it. Covid or no Covid. People in nursing homes are typically very fragile and six months from death.
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True. But I’m just making the point they could have filled the beds if they’d brought the people from the nursing homes in and tried to help them.
That is true. The nursing homes issue is a different issue. People who are not in a good way are largely cared for by minimum wage unqualified carers. They are run for a profit and too many high dependency residents kills the margin.
I’ve seen the contracts to stay in a home and it depressed me. It is equivalent of charging a child for how many pages he wants to colour in a crèche. Having seen it I’d prefer a pillow over my face.
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Separate point really. Many wouldn’t go to ICU in “normal” circumstances with influenza or whatever.
I do think we need to reassess end of life care in Ireland generally though. That’s purely based on personal experience of late though.
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edited
No pal of mine bro, he’s as bad as your beloved Grealish. Galway deserves better don’t you think?
Never a truer word said brother 
He also pretty much singlehandedly introduced the smoking ban. So I think you’re being unfair on him.
I think he is better than the vast majority of them. He has the misfortune to be tied to a party of backward fuckwits, is in bed with a party of snakes, and is essentially on the same path as the previous government following NPHET advice which is bad and has been bad for a long time. Time is increasingly showing that NPHET are doing a bad job and it’s a lot harder now to manage reopening than it was to shut things down.
That’s not go say he’s doing a good job or anything. It’s been a car crash.
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Why was he taking money from property developers and putting it in his wife’s bank account?
Why did he not tell the truth at the subsequent tribunal?
He’s a slimeball.
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