Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to correct the record. Speaking earlier, I may have inadvertently put the figures the wrong way around when I should have said there were 357 cases of Covid-19 and three deaths arising from the virus today.

I thank Deputy Conway-Walsh for her question, which refers to Belmullet.  The Health Protection Surveillance Centre, HPSC, has developed an extensive body of guidance and support tools on resident transfers and admissions, which as we all know are available on the HPSC website. The guidance sets out the measures that should be adopted for admissions to residential facilities.

Belmullet district hospital is a step-down facility supporting acute hospital discharges.  It has a bed capacity of 20 but now has a reduced capacity of 12 beds. The eight beds were unoccupied at the time the reduction took place.  Admissions to the district hospital must comply with the infection prevention and control guidance issued by the HPSC.

The HSE has advised the Department that all measures put in place in Belmullet are in order to adhere to Covid-19 infection protection control guidelines to maximise patient safety.  There are no direct admissions from the community to any district hospital across the board since the commencement of the Covid-19 emergency surge in March 2020. I understand the Deputy's point, as more often than not cases like this involve an older person who may have to be transferred to Mayo to spend a night in the acute hospital before being transferred back. However, since the onset of Covid-19 no person is being transferred directly to a community hospital.

In March or April of this year, while on the other side of this House, I would have raised many times the fact that many patients were transferred to nursing homes without being adequately tested for Covid-19. It was a major factor in the number of older people we lost.

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