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A HSE whistleblower has warned our “filthy” hospitals will be unable to contain the outbreak of coronavirus.

The hygiene services manager first made a protected disclosure to HIQA raising the alarm over the spread of infections as far back as 2014.

The specialist in infection prevention and control has called for the Army to be brought in to deep clean our hospitals if they go into lockdown.

With 19 cases of COVID-19 confirmed here as of last night, the source told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “Our hospitals are too dirty to control any outbreaks.

“We are in serious trouble as two hospitals have already failed to prevent outbreaks of other infections since 2016 and 2018.

“This means patients who are clean get infected by the hospitals’ inadequate control measures.

(Image: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision)

“Make no mistake about it, from an infection control expert opinion if patients with COVID-19 are admitted to these hospitals it will spread rapidly to in-patients.

“It will be uncontrollable and patients will die.”

Yesterday the National Public Health Emergency Team said there was a real risk to patients of acquiring COVID-19 from an exposed healthcare worker.

HSE senior management last night met staff at Cork and Limerick University Hospitals where staff have been exposed to the virus.

One of the latest cases is a female healthcare worker in Cork whose infection is associated with close contact with an already confirmed case at the facility.

This has highlighted concerns about the vulnerability of healthcare professionals on the front line in the fight against the virus.

However, the chair of the NPHE’s expert advisory group Dr Cillian de Gascun said staff could continue working as long as they did not show symptoms.

He added: “Healthcare workers who have had close contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19 and have not developed symptoms and are deemed to be essential workers, may work.”

(Image: Gareth Chaney/Collins)

He said this was provided they “observe strict adherence to infection prevention and control precautions and undergo twice-daily active monitoring by occupational health, for 14 days after contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19”.

The Department of Health’s chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said: “COVID-19, as with other infectious diseases, creates risk to patient care in two ways – the risk of transmission from an infected healthcare worker and the risk of serious impact on patient care by loss of significant numbers of essential staff.”

The HSE agreed to lift the ban on recruitment of frontline staff, including nurses and midwives in response to the outbreak.

But the whistleblower warned it could be too little too late as several hospitals have failed to contain infections as evidenced by repeated damning HIQA reports.

They reveal Dublin’s Tallaght Hospital has had a continuous outbreak of the deadly bacterial superbug CPE since 2016.

On the day of a HIQA inspection in 2018 the doors to all 18 single rooms accommodating CPE patients in the designated infection ward had been left open.

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Similarly, Beaumont Hospital in the North of the capital was found by HIQA not to be coping with outbreaks of CPE last year.

The source added: “The hospital has been failing to manage an outbreak of CPE since August 2018 with little success. How will they cope with Covid-19? I warned the HSE in 2014 about an impending public health emergency… we need the Army to come in and clean the hospitals.

“We need to be training all clinical staff in high risk areas how to don personal protective equipment and monitor compliance continuously.

“We need to do a risk assessment and decide which patients need to be moved to step down facilities, and we need to clear out all over-75s from high-dependency units and critical care units.

“We need to prepare for this national emergency as we are in outbreak mode.”

On Saturday, nurses’ union general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said while she welcomed the lifting of the recruitment embargo it “should have happened much earlier”.

Speaking on RTE radio the INMO chief added hospitals and care centres were under “huge pressure” amid the outbreak and workers need to be protected.

She warned: “We already have a shortage of staff and frontline staff and we have to reduce the activities in order to match what we can provide safely.”

One new case – a male in the east of Ireland who travelled from Italy – was yesterday confirmed to have the virus.

Both the HSE and Department of Health were contacted for comment.