Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
LAST UPDATE | 11 Dec 2020
IRELAND IS WEEKS away from a Covid-19 vaccine being rolled out.
Public Health officials remain concerned, however, about an inevitable rise in cases over Christmas.
Health officials last night confirmed a further 315 cases of Covid-19 and 15 more deaths.
A total of 227 new cases were confirmed on Wednesday and 215 new cases were confirmed on Tuesday.
That is a total of 757 cases compared to 822 cases over the same period last week and 830 cases the week previously.
Ireland’s reproductive number last week was estimated at between 0.8 and 1. It is now estimated at closer to 1.
Ireland’s national incidence rate is 79 cases per 100,000 of the population on a 14-day rolling average, according to data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre – compared to 79.7 on this day last week and 105.5 the week previous.
That is a 24% drop in the past 14 days, a slower rate of decline from 31% over the previous 14 days.
Ireland’s Covid-19 growth rate is currently static.
“We have the same number of cases per day now as we had two weeks ago,” Chair of NPHET’s Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group Professor Philip Nolan told TheJournal.ie. “We’ve had Level 5′s full effect and we’re a bit higher than where we wanted to be.”
According to Professor Nolan, what will matter over the coming weeks is our rate of growth.
In a letter to Government in November, NPHET said it will be possible to suppress the spread of the virus with a 21-day intervention, but only if it begins as case numbers near 400 per day.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan warned last week, however, that cases are unlikely to fall below 200 per day and said NPHET’s projection of 300 to 600 cases per day by the second week of January is “conservative”. It does not take account of socialisation around Christmas.
Taking that into account, NPHET’s modelling projects an easing of restrictions from 18 December could lead to an R-number of 2 and 800 to 1,200 cases per day by the second week of January.
However, NPHET’s modelling is based on a rapid growth rate of 100 cases per day on 1 December rising to 400 cases per day by January.
The threshold for intervention is now likely higher – 600-700 cases cases per day – due to Ireland’s growth rate stopping and cases sticking at an average of 285 per day.
If cases begin to rise our rate of growth will be closely monitored.
Looking at 14-day incidence rates in individual counties, these have decreased in recent weeks in line with case numbers. However, incidence in certain counties is rising.
Donegal – which has the highest incidence of Covid-19 in Ireland – had seen its 14-day incidence rate drop from 264.5 cases per 100,000 on Friday 20 November to 212.3 last Thursday.
It has risen over the past seven days to 230.5 cases per 100,000.
As cases increase in Northern Ireland, cross-border transmission into Donegal is recurring, said Professor Nolan, adding that Donegal accounts for 60% of all cross-border commutes.
Looking at Local Electoral Area data, Carndonagh LEA in north Donegal has an incidence rate of 518.7 cases per 100,000. Letterkenny LEA is currently at 322.2 cases per 100,000 – both considerably higher than Glenties LEA in west Donegal where the current incidence rate is 62.2 cases per 100,000.
For a breakdown of incidence rates in LEAs around Ireland, see here.
Kilkenny – which has seen a large hospital outbreak in recent weeks – has a 14-day incidence rate of 173.5 – a 16% increase since last Thursday.
Louth is the third-highest county in Ireland with a 14-day incidence rate of 159.8 cases per 100,000. However, that is a 13% decrease since last Thursday.
Counties with the lowest incidence rates include Leitrim (18.7), Westmeath (20.3) and Kerry (23.7).
Comparing Ireland to other European countries, Ireland’s 14-day incidence rate is lower than France (230.0), Spain (228.0), the United Kingdom (314.8) and Italy (479.3), according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
The above countries, including Ireland, are still considerably lower than both Croatia, which has a 14-day incidence rate of 1171.5 cases and Luxembourg, which has a 14-day incidence rate of 1202.2 cases per 100,000.
Testing & Tracing
Approximately 116,000 tests were carried out over the 7 days up to Thursday 22 October when Ireland entered Level 5. The positivity rate then was 6.9%.
Approximately 103,000 tests were carried out in the 7 days up to 29 October with 88,547 tests having been carried in the seven days up to Thursday 5 November.
Three weeks into Level 5, 77,718 tests had been carried out in the seven days up to 12 November with 77,292 tests having been carried out up to 19 November and 77,805 tests being carried out in the last seven days up to last Friday.
So, while the number of tests had dropped by 33% between Level 5 kicking in and the halfway point on 12 November, the number of tests each week since then has remained static at around 77,000.
This week, approximately 77,000 tests have been carried in the past seven days.
The positivity rate – which had decreased to 2.7% last week – is down to 2.4%, the lowest point since September.
Hospital & ICU
There have been 11 hospital admissions in the last 24 hours and 17 discharges.
There are – as of this morning – 203 confirmed Covid-19 cases in hospitals and 36 people in Intensive Care Units.
Last Thursday, there were 234 hospitalised cases of Covid-19 and 32 people in ICU.
Health officials on Wednesday reported 8 further ICU cases in one day, and cautioned that Covid-19 remains an “extremely infectious” virus.
As seen in the graph below, ICU cases have risen sharply in recent days.
Clusters & Outbreaks
Last week saw a significant reduction in the number of household outbreaks – a key indicator as Level 5 restrictions were introduced and one which will be closely monitored leading up to Christmas.
There were 262 new outbreaks in private homes up to Saturday 28 November – a decrease of 60% – from the previous week bringing to 7,123 the total number of outbreaks in this setting since the pandemic reached Ireland.
In a sign that viral transmission is neither rising nor decreasing there were 288 new outbreaks in private homes up to last Saturday.
Of these, 4,744 remain open.
Outbreaks in schools have also remained steady since last week.
There were 14 outbreaks reported by the HPSC up to Saturday. There were 12 outbreaks reported in the 7 days beforehand.
The HPSC notes, however: “These outbreaks are outbreaks associated with school children +/or school staff. Transmission of Covid-19 within the school has not necessarily been established in these outbreaks.”
The total number of outbreaks since the start of the pandemic is 9,746. Of these, 5,424 remain “open” according to the HPSC’s recent data.
For an outbreak to be considered “closed”, there must be 28 days from the last case diagnosed or becoming symptomatic.
There has also been a further 8 outbreaks in workplace settings, bringing to 29 the number of outbreaks in this setting between 28 November and today.
Finally, there have been 5 new outbreaks in nursing homes – 32 outbreaks in nursing homes remain “open”.
Between 28 November and last Saturday, the number of outbreaks across all settings had decreased by just 1.1%.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Who’s more dishonest?
Prisoners or the ones they’d be voting for?
It seams like prisoners have more rights than their victims
If you read the judgement, the ECHR (not the Court of Justice in Europe, by the way) objects to a blanket ban on all prisoners voting. They agree, in principle, that some prisoners can be banned, but not all. So I’m not sure how you’re arguing that a mugger has more voting rights than the victim or a drug dealer has more voting rights than a drug user.
They’ll have more voting rights than everyone who’s been forced to emigrate. Commit a murder and you get to be involved in shaping a government?! Enforced emigrants can’t vote from abroad so can’t help reshape the government that caused their exodus. Something’s wrong with that picture.
If you read the judgement, you would have noted they don’t say it has to be extended to murderers, simply that a blanket ban against all prisoners is disproportionate. What about those serving minor sentences?
I think it would be really interesting for Irish emigrants to take a case to the ECHR, however. It’d be a good case with these precedents.
Even more reason to leave the EU
The EU and the European Convention of Human Rights are two separate organisations.
Nick, EU Membership requires accession to the ECHR.
Do you think he was referencing that distinction or that he had confused the two? I’m betting on the latter….
I’m more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
You’re clearly less cynical than I am. :-) Regardless, I do think there’s a lack of understanding of the distinctions between the two and it’s important that when we’re talking about it, that it’s clearly pointed out what the ECHR does and what the Court of Justice of Europe does.
How far can the ECHR go in interfering with the way countries are run?
Surely suffrage is a constitutional matter.
I don’t believe that prisoners voting is mentioned in the Italian constitution (certainly not in the UK). I heard the arguments being made on behalf of the prisoners and it was quite compelling – the idea that when politicians (not constitutions) define who should be able to vote, it’s a dangerous concept of democracy.
Suffrage is generally granted by the state. Should it be imposed from above?
And the UK doesn’t have a written consitution it has a history through law.
It seems it comes down to how much you believe that voting is a human right and how much you think it should be a sovereign matter. Considering that voting has typically been denied to women and minorities in a lot of states, I view it as a basic human right (of course, I’m in the minority that believes children should be able to vote, so I doubt I’m representative of the whole populace).
If you perceive voting as a basic human right, this judgement makes a lot of sense. You don’t seem to view it as a right, but as something which states can legitimately deny portions of the population.
Sorry, I’ve been agog since I read that you want kids to vote.
They can’t decide whether they want sausages or fish fingers for dinner but you want them to elect governments.
Mad. As.
I believe in pure democracy. But I don’t think they can do worse than some other voters in Europe!
Diluting the franchise doesn’t strengthen it, unless you believe in homeopathy.
I don’t know what that comparison is about, but if you argue that you believe in universal suffrage, there should be no exceptions. But then we’ve already established you believe governments should be able to take the vote away from people without any form of oversight.
I also would love to live in a society governed by pure democracy but could only ever work if everyone was informed on what they have the power to vote on, take for example some people I’ve meet recently who plan on voting yes, they can only reiterate what the TV told them about “stability” and future bailouts. They hadn’t the foggiest clue what I was on about when I mentioned my concerns and skepticism over certain articles of the treaty or our relation to the ESM if we ratify it what it means to vote Yes and our then commitments, they switch off and say “ah but shure the Gov. are looking for a yes so we can get more money and the no are a bunch of shinners and out from the fringes as usual”
These people who wont go to the bother of looking into what they been asked to make an informed decision and vote on are dangerous, and a sad byproduct of democracy led by laziness and persuasion when they will vote the way they are told if its repeated enough times and made sound the safer option between the ads for Eurovision.
Even though they will not question the accuracy or merits of what they are taking as positive points.
This can be said for people who vote the other way also mind, but since the Gov are pushing these things in a certain direction pure democracy has little chance of achieving its true potential of everyone in society making a valid contribution through their informed decision when real assessments and clear wordings are absent and drowned out with garbage, garjon and scaremongering.
My understanding of an individual being punished for crimes committed means ‘no rights to anything that is happening in the outside world. Did the crime – do the time!
It is in my opinion that if you are in prison for committing a crime you forfeit your right to vote until you are rehabilitated and released!
Next thing you know they’ll expect the jails to let the inmates nip down to their local voting centres, “of course we’ll be back, honest g’vnor.”
Sinn fein will be thrilled!
have your say