The number of hospitalized patients with Covid-19 will rise to between 650 and 2000 next month due to a massive increase in cases of Omicron variants, health officials predicted.
The impact on the intensive care unit could be even greater as the number of patients exceeds 200, warned Professor Philip Nolan, a member of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet).
Even that estimate for ICU patients could go much further if the variant turns out to be more transmissible or shows more immune evasion than authorities estimated, he said.
Omicron is expected to become the dominant variety in Ireland in the next four to five days, leading to a rapid increase in symptomatic infections. That will peak between 8,000 and 20,000 cases a day in January, Professor Nolan said, depending on the level of social mixing that takes place during the Christmas period.
Nphet developed a series of models for various growth scenarios around Omicron’s transmission advantage over earlier strains of the virus, its ability to circumvent the protection offered by vaccines, and the extent of social combining over the next several weeks.
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