A seventh person in the Republic of Ireland has died from Coronavirus while the amount of confirmed cases in Clare has increased once again, to eleven.
There are now 1,329 confirmed cases in the country with over 1,500 on the island of Ireland. 204 more persons were diagnosed with Covid-19 today. The seventh person die in the Republic of Ireland was in the Eastern part of the country and had an underlying health condition.
To date, 17,992 tests have been carried out in laboratories across the country, as of midnight last night. 14,692 samples have been tested at the National Viruus Reference Laboratory of which 94% returned negative.
956 cases from Sunday have been analysed and revealed the median age to be 45 years old. There are 44 clusters involving 243 of the 956 with the male to female breakdown marked as 55% to 45%. 277 cases had been hospitalised from Sunday’s figures, 36 of which were admitted to ICU. Of those for whom transmission status is known: community transmission accounts for 47%, close contact accounts for 23%, travel abroad accounts for 31%
Dublin has the highest number of cases at 535, (55% of all cases) followed by Cork with 123 cases (13%). From this amount, Clare accounted for 11 of the 956.
Meetings held by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) on Monday night and Tuesday morning issued a number of recommendations which have been adopted by the Government.
Ireland has now adopted the World Health Organisation case definition for COVID-19, ‘A patient with fever and at least one sign of respiratory disease e.g. cough, shortness of breath’. People should not use public transport unless it is absolutely necessary.
Chief Medical Officer with the Department of Health, Dr Tony Holohan stated, “We are now in the crucial weeks of our response to COVID-19. All actions we take are based on epidemiological evidence and in proportion to our experience on this island. As we learn more about this disease, we are prioritising who will be tested. If you are not in a priority group, you might not be tested. However, if you have the symptoms, assume you have COVID-19 and isolate yourself.”
“Priority groups for testing include close contacts of a confirmed case with symptoms, healthcare workers with symptoms and people who are vulnerable with symptoms. Whether you are tested or not, the advice remains the same; if you have any symptoms, assume you have COVID-19 and isolate yourself for 14 days to help stop the spread of this disease. Household contacts of a suspected case should restrict their contacts for 14 days,” Dr. Ronan Glynn, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, outlined.
Dr. Colm Henry, Chief Clinical Officer, HSE, said; “Ireland is following WHO advice to ‘test, test, test’ and is in the top quartile in terms of number of tests we have performed per capita. This, alongside physical distancing measures and intensive contact tracing, is deemed best practice internationally for dealing with this threat.”
Analysis of public health contact tracing has shown that the average number of close contacts per confirmed case has decreased from 20+ to the region of 5 contacts. This shows that the public is following health advise and actively limiting the amount of people they engage with.
