The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
FEARS have been expressed the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 may lead to staffing shortages in hospitals early in the New Year. Dr Catherine Motherway, a leading intensive care consultant at Limerick University Hospital, has voiced concern in a recent interview that the highly transmissible new variant will have a very significant impact on staff. The National Ambulance Service (NAS) meanwhile has put private operators on standby in expectation that high numbers of staff will be lost to Covid, coupled with an expected surge in call-outs in January. Case numbers soared nationally to 11,182 on Christmas Eve, with Omicron as the driving factor. The variant now accounts for 83pc of all cases. There were 38 confirmed Covid-19 patients in ICU at UHL on Tuesday, which was the third highest in the country after 51 were recorded in Beaumont Hospital and 38 in Tallaght. The HSE’s Performance Management and Improvement Unit has confirmed 12 of these confirmed cases are being treated …
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