The recent surge could lead to non-urgent procedures being cancelled again.
The latest Covid wave is having a 'significant impact' on patients in emergency departments, according to a leading HSE official.
There are 812 patients in hospital with the virus - more than twice as many as three weeks ago.
Head of the Saolta Hospital Group, Tony Canavan, says he hopes we're at the top of the current wave.
He says the recent surge is affecting hospitals - and could lead to non-urgent procedures being cancelled again.
"All of our EDs are extremely busy and we have a lot of high numbers of admissions but the availability of beds has been reduced because of covid. So, where you have an outbreak in a ward it means that beds can not be admitted for a period of time and so we have seen an increase in the number of patients waiting for admission on trolleys."
"If the number were to continue to rise we would see an increase in the of people number on trolleys and we would have to start looking at the elective procedures.
"At the moment what we're hoping is that we are reaching the top of the current wave, that we're reaching a plateau and that will probably be sustained for a period of time before it starts to improve again and numbers go down.
"At the moment elective procedures are going ahead and it's something we'll be looking at on a day-to-day basis."
