The patient was moved by helicopter from a hospital in the southwest to Dublin at the weekend.
The Air Corps says it was tasked by the HSE to move the patient because of hospital capacity issues .
A critical care retrieval team from the Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance Service (MICAS) joined two Air Corps pilots and a medically trained crewman on the flight.
The patient was moved by helicopter between hospitals in the Southwest and Dublin. (Image: Air Corps)
Commandant Stephen Byrne said: It was an airborne ICU. On the night we transported a critical care doctor and a critical care paramedic from the National Ambulance Service. They departed with us from Baldonnel to the hospital in the southwest to receive the patient. Then they cared for that patient in the air on the journey back to Baldonnel and then during a road transfer to a hospital in Dublin.
Hospitals are preparing for the worst-case scenario of running out of critical care beds in the coming week, as the health service is pushed to the limits of its capacity.
A number of hospitals have already reached capacity with patients in need of intensive care treatment transferred to acute hospitals with free beds.
Forty intensive care patients have been transferred between hospitals since January 1, more than twice the normal volume. Not all are Covid-19 patients. However, the transfers are as a direct result of the pressures on the hospitals caused by the virus.
Dr Colm Henry, the chief clinical officer of the Health Service Executive, last night said that all hospitals were in surge, some hospitals had reached the limits of their surge capacity and intensive care patients were being transferred to units in other hospitals.
Covid patients transferred across country for ICU beds
Updated / Saturday, 23 Jan 2021
19:26
Covid-19 patients have been transferred hundreds of kilometres to get to an ICU bed.
The Clinical Director of the Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance Service said that 40 critically ill patients have been moved between hospitals this month so far, including 17 this week.
Dr David Menzies said the majority of the patients have Covid-19 and were being transferred because there wasn t an intensive care bed available in the hospital they were in.
The service is already twice as busy as it was last January, and as hospitals and ICU operate in surge capacity, its role has become even more vital.