Health workers want better protective gear for Omicron surge
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation urgently wants an upgrade to protective equipment for all healthcare workers including FFP2 masks.
Exhausted nurses facing a second Covid Christmas want all staff urgently issued with high-level protective masks to beat the threat posed by the new Omicron variant.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) will meet with the HSE today to discuss ways to work with the increased transmissibility of this variant.
Although healthcare workers began receiving boosters in early November, since then there have been more than 1,838 Covid-19 cases among staff.
The INMO director of industrial relations Tony Fitzpatrick yesterday warned that nurses are already tired. He estimated over half of those Covid-cases are nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants as they spend the longest with patients.
“It is another Covid Christmas, those on the frontline are struggling,” he said.
“Generally the services are so busy. Now we are trying to run multiple services including the Covid testing and tracing, vaccinations so it is a bigger service than it was two years ago.”
The INMO and other health trades unions have collectively written to the HSE on concerns around masking and ventilation, he said.
“We are saying we need to up our standards. The FFP2 masks should be used as a standard now for health service staff,” he said.
“The evidence is this offers better protection than the surgical masks.” FFP2 masks (filtering face piece level 2) are now mandatory even for the public in parts of Europe including Austria and for some public places in Germany.
Mr Fitzpatrick understands the HSE Estates is reviewing ventilation standards on its properties and said there are concerns about a lack of uniformity around this.
“Take Cork as an example, the CUH (Cork University Hospital) seems to have a good-enough ventilation system and Hepa filtration” he said, saying in other hospitals union members have raised concerns about the lack of these same systems.
Concerns around staff shortages are such even now that vaccinated asymptomatic healthcare workers who are close contacts can voluntarily opt to skip isolation in discussion with management under a “derogation agreement”.
This states: “Consideration should be given to the risk to patient safety from absences of essential healthcare workers and the person may return assuming efforts were made to find replacements.
The Department of Health yesterday confirmed 4,799 new cases of Covid-19. There were 467 Covid patients in hospital, including 104 in ICU.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Tourism launched a new Live Performance Support Scheme to support events planned for December and January.
Catherine Martin met representatives from the live performance sector, along with chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan, to discuss the impact of these new restrictions yesterday.
The schemes now open for applications include €20m specifically to support live performances planned for December and January which may need to be cancelled, curtailed or rescheduled due to the new restrictions. Up to 100% of eligible production costs will be funded.
An additional €5m for the seasonal musical theatre and pantomime scheme has also been announced.
