Mr. Paul Reid:

It is not a direct equivalent.

On ICUs, this is important and we need to help clarify it for the public. The total number of ICU beds in March before this pandemic started was 225. We put in place some further funding. The Deputy is correct; the number today is 280 and it was 225. An extra 30 beds were funded by Government and further beds were put in place with the pandemic funding. This brought the number up to 280 today, an increase of about 25% since February. Separately, we have funding for an extra 17 beds in the winter plan. That will bring us close to 300, which would be about a 30% increase on our February figure.

On the 334 figure the Deputy mentioned, he is correct. During the early phase of this, our ICU consultants did a fantastic job when all our hospital services were closed. They created a surge capacity, if we had needed it, of well over 300 beds, as the Deputy said. That was the capacity that was utilised for the surge. We trained 2,000 nurses and doctors to manage the surge capacity. Obviously, we have those high-dependency unit beds, pre-operative and post-operative theatre beds back in service now, bringing us to our fully manned number, which the Deputy quite rightly said is 280 today. We monitor this quite closely and we have about 41 beds available today. It is always tight.