Portlaoise Hospital has trebled the amount of beds it has in their Intensive Care Unit as staff and management brace themselves to deliver critical care to patients who have been hospitalised with Coronavirus.
Sandra McCarthy, the Director of Nursing in Portlaoise General Hospital, explained on social media last week that staff have vacated the staff room and offices to create additional isolation facilities.
HSE sources confirmed to LaoisToday that prior to this, Portlaoise had two ICU beds.
However, they have now increased capacity to six as they brace themselves for the worst of this pandemic.
Around the country, there were 88 people in ICU yesterday morning and that is a figure that has grown considerably in the space of of ten days.
To put that in context, on Thursday March 19, there were 13 people in ICU so the numbers are up 75 since then.
A total 200 of new cases of Coronavirus have been diagnosed in Ireland yesterday.
This was an increase on the 2,415 cases from Saturday and takes the overall total to 2,615.
While now 46 people have died from the disease – an increase of 10 from Saturday.
6 of these deaths are located in the east of the country, 3 in the northwest of the country and 1 in the south. The average age of the reported deaths is 77.
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