The Medical Director at one the country’s biggest hospitals has warned it could lose up a quarter of its acute bed capacity as a result of Covid-19.
Dr Barry O'Connell at St James’s Hospital in Dublin told RTÉ the need to operate safe social distancing measures could see the hospital lose up to 200 beds.
Dr O'Connell said: "We’re trying to get back to normal business which is a normal hospital. Covid on top of that means our normal business cannot be how it was – it has to be more spread out, a lower concentration of people. "We have six bedded ward bays, we probably have to change that and change it pretty promptly to fewer people in each ward, maybe try and change to all single rooms. "If we do that we will lose somewhere between 100 to