Unprecedented pressure on local hospitals as infection runs rampant in community

Thu, Jan 21, 2021

The local acute hospital system remains under “severe pressure”, the like of which it has never experienced before, the chief executive of the Saolta University Health Care Group, which runs the seven public hospitals in the west and north-west of the country, said this week.

There are more people hospitalised now with Covid-19 than at any other time during the pandemic.

Tony Canavan was speaking as Covid-19 numbers continue to rise in Galway, almost 2,800 new cases of the virus were confirmed in the past two weeks in the region. There are currently 129 Covid positive patients in University Hospital Galway with 11 of these being treated in the intensive care unit. At the peak of the first wave, the highest number of patients in the hospital with the virus at any one time was 18, according to UHG manager, Chris Kane.