*Photograph: John Mangan
11 new cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed in Co Clare among 827 nationally while 55 more deaths related to the virus have been reported.
Clare’s 14 day incidence rate of the virus per 100k of the population remains the fifth lowest in the country at 189.4 and below the national rate of 345.6.
A provisional 11 new cases are known in Clare with 827 nationally, 297 are in Dublin, 76 in Cork, 56 in Galway, 46 in Wexford, 37 in Kildare and the remaining 315 cases are spread across all other counties.
An additional 55 deaths related to Coronavirus have been notified to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre. 36 of these deaths occurred in February, 18 in January, and the date of 1 death remains under investigation. The median age of those who died is 86 years and the age range is 49-100 years. There has been a total of 3,674 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.
Latest hospital data from 2pm on Saturday highlighted that 177 persons are in critical care, they are included in the figure of 1,777 in hospitals. 29 additional hospitalisations were recorded in the past 24 hours.
In a statement on Saturday, the Chief Medical Officer stated that persons must contact their GP over the weekend if they feel unwell. “There are a few old habits that collectively we have to break in order to suppress COVID-19 together. We know that people who feel unwell typically avoid calling their GP over the weekend, and wait to see if they improve. You should no longer do that – you must phone your GP at the first sign of anything like COVID-19 symptoms. Do not adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach”.
Dr Tony Holohan added, “Similarly, do not leave your house or go to work if you have any cold or flu like symptoms at all. Breaking these habits will limit COVID-19’s opportunity to spread from person to person”.
Earlier on Saturday, the first batch of AstraZeneca vaccines (21,600) arrived in Dublin from Belgium. On Monday morning a large quantity of these vaccines will be given to healthcare workers.
