Mondays are typically the busiest day of the week in every emergency department across the world. In Tallaght University Hospital's emergency department, the staff have another reason to be concerned, as they face into one of the peak days of the surge in hospital admissions from the pandemic. "We’re six doctors short today," says the lead consultant on duty, Aileen McCabe.
That equates to almost a third of her senior medics. All of them are out because of Covid-19. Outside in the waiting room, a queue of patients is building up.
Inside, Dr McCabe and her staff are battling to save a woman’s life. The patient is unconscious. It may or may not be a Covid case, but it has to be treated as one for infection control reasons.