A GP in Co Cork has raised concerns about the pressure practices are under amid the fourth wave of Covid-19 and uncertainty over the Omicron variant.
Dr Diarmuid Quinlan told EchoLive that the workload for the average GP has increased "very substantially".
“Covid trends are deteriorating, Covid incidence is rising all across the country, the Government has now brought in new restrictions, they have said we’re going to have the booster campaign for people over 50 and they’ve introduced new restrictions for household contacts so all of those things make general practice more busy.
“Our surgeries are really busy. There’s an awful lot of respiratory illness, particularly among children, so when people ring our surgery the phone lines are just busy from when we open until we close — so we would ask people if they can to please be patient with our staff. They’re working really hard.
"We still want and need to see people who are sicker so if they can’t get through we would encourage them to persevere, and if somebody has a lump or cancer concerns, or they think somebody might be seriously ill, they just need to persevere.
“Our practices are very busy and we have a finite capacity. There is a limited number of GPs with the limited number of appointments that we can safely see and that has put substantial pressure then on the GP out of hours or SouthDoc,” he said.
Covid figures
Meanwhile, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has expressed relief at the latest coronavirus figures which indicate that the efforts of the public have made a difference in stabilising infections.
Speaking to RTÉ on his way into the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, Mr Donnelly appealed to “the relatively small number of people” who were not yet vaccinated to do so, as it could reduce hospital admissions by half and intensive care numbers even more.
The latest figures from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) compared the current situation with the “sobering modelling forecasts” of two weeks ago, he said. “I'm delighted to be able to say that we can really see the impact of the efforts that people are making.”
The Cabinet are meeting to discuss proposed new measures designed to further curb the spread of Covid.
