A team of vaccinators will begin innoculating healthcare workers at the Covid-19 vaccination centre at the Galway Racecourse this morning (Thursday ).
The Ballybrit site, one of 37 such facilities throughout the country, opened today after extensive preparatory work. It is expected that the team there will begin vaccinating the general population by the middle of next month.
Tony Canavan, the chief executive of the seven public hospitals in the west and north-west, told this newspaper earlier this week that the physical and IT work was completed on the site on Tuesday evening. The vaccine teams moved out there yesterday.
Vaccine hub at Merlin Park
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“They will start vaccinating healthcare workers on Thursday,” he said. “This allows us to start using the site and identify any problems. By mid March, hopefully we will start vaccinating the general population there and any problems will be ironed out by then.”
As part of the vaccine rollout, a vaccine hub will open at Unit 3 in Merlin Park Hospital this week. Thirteen GPs will use this HSE facilitity over the weekend to vaccinate people aged 85 years and older.
A number of satellite vaccination centres will also open in west Galway and the islands. The west Galway facility will be located in Connemara but it will be a while before this opens and the location has not been finalised.
Mr Canavan, who took over as the head of the Saolta University Health Care Group in September 2019 and presides over an annual budget of almost one billion euro, said the vaccination programme is a complicated exercise but it is “going very well”.
Three strand process
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He explained that it is a three strand process. The first strand involved older people in long-term care in public and private nursing homes and the staff who care for them. “This was the Government’s first priority and the aim was to have the first dose administered by 24 January and we hit that target.
“Now, we have almost completed the second dose on all those people and we are starting a catch-up - vaccinating the small number who could not get it for clinical reasons [previously]. There are 83 public and private nursing homes in Galway, Mayo, and Roscommon and all these are now almost done.”
Strand 2 represents the vaccination of healthcare workers, this began on December 29. “We are aiming to have all frontline healthcare workers vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine by the end of February. In March we will move on to the other healthcare workers.”
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The third strand centres around the general population, according to the head of Saolta, which employs 10,000 people. This vaccination process began in the last fortnight. People over 85 in the west are being vaccinated by their GPs in their surgeries.
The health chief said rolling out the vaccine programme is “exciting” and the response to it has been “brilliant”.
“There is such excitement and relief among people who have received it. There is a huge uptake among long-term care residents.”
Mr Canavan said the death toll from Covid-19 is a stark reminder of how deadly it can be. Almost the same number of people died from the virus in 10 weeks recently as the number who lost their lives in a nine-month period last year.
Reminder
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He stated this is a “really, really important” reminder for us all. “From March 11 2020, when the first person died of Covid-19, until December 1, 2,069 people passed away [from the virus] in this country. That was over a nine month period. And in the 10 weeks after that, December, January, and up until mid-February, a further 2,000 people died. These groups comprise healthcare workers, and people in nursing homes and in the community. A total of 288 people passed away from the virus in Galway, Mayo, and Roscommon since it hit this country last year.
Older people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, particularly in this, the third wave of the pandemic. Some 42 per cent of those who died were aged 85 years and over. However, people over 85 only represent six per cent of all Covid-19 cases.
“People who suffer and suffered most in terms of poor outcomes were people over 70 and over 85,” said the head of the Saolta Group.
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He said it is important to pay tribute to the memory of those who have gone and comply with the Level 5 restrictions. “Every evening [on the news bulletins] we hear the number of deaths from Covid-19. it is really, really important to remember that every number is a person and left behind is a grieving family.
“We must remember the people - the family members, colleagues, and friends who have died and the difficult time they had and the impact [this loss] has on people and communities. We can pay tribute to those who died by redoubling our efforts to halt the spread of Covid-19.”
While the number of people being hospitalised with the virus is decreasing, there is no room for complacency, he warned. People must continue adhering to public health guidelines to help drive down infection levels in the community.
25 Covid positive patients
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There were 25 Covid positive patients in Covid wards at UHG on Tuesday, down from 34 a fortnight ago. Mr Canavan says this is a good figure for a very large hospital - UHG is the biggest hospital in the west and has 700 in-patient beds.
Covid numbers in the 222-bed Portiuncula Hospital have been low for some time, there are three patients with the virus currently, down from six two weeks ago. The CEO said the numbers have been “relatively low” in the Ballinasloe hospital which is a “smaller facility”. He outlined there has been a “fairly steady improvement” in numbers in all Saolta hospitals over the last couple of weeks.
There were seven Covid positive patients in UHG’s intensive care unit at the time of going to press, down from eight on February 9. There are no Covid patients currently in Portiuncula Hospital’s ICU.
“What we are seeing in ICUs is that they are moving in the right direction and we expect this to improve. ICU numbers are related to hospital numbers, if they come down, ICU numbers come down.”
Fourth wave capacity
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There are a “very small” number of ICU beds available in Saolta’s seven hospitals. However, if the need arose, the hospitals can increase capacity, Mr Canavan stressed.
“When we hit the peak on 27 January we went into surge capacity Level 5. We are out of it now, and [are moving] in steps back to Level 1. If a fourth wave were to come and we had to expand up, we can go through surge again.”
There is also capacity to provide specialised Covid-19 care (non-invasive ventilation or oxygen therapy ) outside ICUs in ward settings, according to Mr Canavan. UHG has 38 beds for this purpose (only six are currently in use ) and Portiuncula has 18 (four are occupied ). There is also potential to transfer patients from hospitals in their own areas to other facilities that are under less pressure or have greater capacity. Again, reducing case numbers, and the fact that, as Mr Canavan said, “hospitals are starting to recover” means the demand for this service has reduced.
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The number of hospital staff on Covid-19 related leave has not decreased much in recent weeks. There are 154 staff absent from UHG now [of a total number of 3,500], down from 156 two weeks ago. Mr Canavan said the absentee numbers are a “relatively small percentage” compared to the overall staff number. Employees are normally out for two weeks on Covid leave but some are on long-term leave because they have underlying conditions.
Of the 154 staff absent from UHG, 128 are nurses, healthcare assistants, and porters. There are 17 staff currently on Covid-related leave from Portiuncula Hospital, up from 10 a fortnight ago. Eight of these are nurses, healthcare assistants, and porters. The biggest single group which is affected in the local hospitals is nurses, both because they are the biggest group of employees and because of the nature of their work. The remainder of absentee staff are doctors, clerical staff, and allied health professionals, such as physiotherapists.
