The CEO of the HSE has said that 20 per cent of the PPE delivered from China is not suitable for use in the front line and will be dispatched to other services, despite it costing €4 million, with the supplier being told not to supply any more of those products to Ireland.
At a virtual press conference from the distribution centre, Paul Reid said the delivery of personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the week was being tested for quality in Cork and found that it fell into three categories of quality.
He said 65 per cent of the delivery had met the required standards. However, 15 per cent was only suitable for use if the preferred PPE was not available.
A further 20 per cent did not meet the desired standards but could be used in other healthcare settings.
Over €30 million was spent on the first ten flights of PPE stock this week, €4 million spent on the unsuitable 20 per cent, however, there would be no refunds given to the HSE.
“We don’t want any further delivery of this kit and are getting revised samples at the back of this week from the supplier, who has cooperated with us,” said Mr Reid.
The HSE was procuring PPE in an extremely volatile market – a market which would remain volatile, he said.
Testing centres
He added that the HSE was seeking to develop a network of testing centres across the country, with 50 now existing across Ireland. It was also seeking to be in a position to scale up the network of labs and boost the contact tracing system for the public.
He said he was pleased to announce that from next week, the 2000 to 2500 tests that were being done per day in labs would increase to 4500 tests.
“We have improved the supply chain of labs and testing products, with a major supplier from Germany undertaking 2000 completed tests per days for us. We are looking at other European solutions and new labs in Ireland.”
Extra beds
He said more support was now being given to nursing homes by reducing the amount of staff working in more than one sites, PPE provision, accommodation support and enlisting the support of HIQA.
There were now a total of 5000 extra hospital beds in the public system, also.
On Friday night, the HSE signed the terms of agreement with the private hospital groups for private beds for public use during Covid19 crisis, providing an extra 2500 beds to the 2500 public hospital beds.
There was also an additional 1100 isolation beds at the City West centre and space for 450 acute overflow beds being constructed.
A further 1200 beds for isolation across were being provided across the country and other options remained available to the HSE.
He added that there were now an additional 1100 ventilators in the public system and 1300 more being delivered by the end of April.
The scaling up of private beds to the public hospital system meant that the country would also have access to an additional 800 beds for the purpose of ICU, and staff were being trained up to work within that space.
Mr Reid said that they had also now received 70,000 applications through the Irish recruitment call for health workers and 820 had progressed over last week.
Community assessment hubs
Anne O’ Connor, Chief Operations Officer at the HSE urged members of the public in need of urgent care, which was not related to Covid19) to continue to seek care from GPs and emergency departments, as there was a worrying reduction in numbers of people presenting to hospitals.
She stated that community assessment hubs would be rolled out across Ireland, with 12 to 15 opened by end of week. They would be only be accepting referrals from GPs seeing patients from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week.
She said that GP practices would then be able to continue to cope with all non-Covid care at GP surgeries.
