Maintaining social distancing will be “quite a challenge” at the 39 HSE-run coronavirus community assessment hubs after the first open this week, the president of the Irish College of General Practitioners has said.said that the supply of protective equipment for the GPs, nurses and administrative staff would be “critical” and a “minimum requirement” for the functioning of the network of hubs across the country, which aim to help manage the pandemic in Ireland.
“We would expect the patients coming in to be Covid-positive or highly suspicious of Covid disease, so they will have the virus themselves or it will be highly probable that they will have the virus. The concerns around that are significant.” Most of the hubs around the country are based in or next to existing primary care centres in the HSE network. The HSE said they will be open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week.The aim of the network is to protect hospitals from a surge of Covid-positive patients entering emergency departments, to manage infected patients in the community and to protect GP surgeries, their doctors and staff to allow a return to more normalised general practice.
The Cork doctor acknowledged that patients might be trying to protect GPs from infection or they might be afraid they could be infected by the virus in GP surgeries.
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