HSE looking at easing nursing home visitor restrictions, says Harris

The HSE is examining the issue of easing visitor restrictions in nursing homes, Minister for Health Simon Harris has said.

He told the Dáil they were assessing the possibility of allowing visitors to meet family members outside.

But as debate about the responsibility for developments in nursing homes during the pandemic where 884 deaths occurred, Mr Harris said “many people are seeking to apportion blame but we should remind ourselves that the villain here is the virus”.

Mr Harris also said outbreaks had been stemmed in 29 Covid-19 clusters in nursing homes and there had been no new cases in those homes for the past 28 days.

During a debate on the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the health service Mr Harris also said the reproduction rate, the rate at which an infected individual will transmit the disease, is now stable at between 0.4 and 0.5.

“It suggests a ‘stable transition’ where we have kept the virus under control while moving to the first phase of reopening our society. This and other key indicators give grounds for cautious optimism.”

There had been one to two admissions in ICU (intensive care units). He said there had been one to two admissions to ICU and 10 to 15 admissions to hospital a day.

Voice of homes

Fianna Fáil health spokesman Stephen Donnelly said however the correspondence between Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) and the State painted a very dark picture of staff having to use painters’ overalls and goggles from local schools to protect themselves. He also said NHI had “ no voice on the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) or even on the sub-group looking at nursing homes”.

He added that guidance issued on March 10th showed that patients going from hospitals to nursing homes were not tested and asked what contributed most to the deaths in homes.

Mr Harris said “our position on testing” evolved throughout the crisis but there was engagement from February and the transfer of patients was done with a doctor deciding it was appropriate to transfer somebody.

He added that the expert review panel would look at the issue of admissions and transfers.

Mr Harris also insisted that the HSE would need to keep some capacity in private hospitals after renewed criticism about empty beds in the 19 private facilities taken over by the State when there was such demand in the public system and the deal was costing €115 million a month.

Inequity

Independent TD Catherine Connolly said that private patients were being sent to the public system where she said where there were people already waiting three-and-a-half years for treatment and cancer patients were not getting treatment.

She said in Galway Merlin Park hospital, the Rehab section that had been built up had been stopped and the patients moved to the private Bon Secours hospital and the nurses “moved down to the public hospital to sit in a lobby to be called and put in a different ward every single day” and the private hospitals are “practically empty”

She said a private consultant gynaecologist with 350 patients with 50 needing urgent surgery and she could not do it. She said “inequity is built into every part of this agreement”.

Mr Harris said he still believed that the deal with the private hospitals was the right thing to do. He acknowledged there were challenges and “we need to finesse it” and get the best possible arrangement but “we can’t allow public patients not have their services and private people who have health insurance still continue to get it and that is the challenge”.