THE CENTRAL STATISTICS Office (CSO) has released its latest analysis of data on Covid-19 cases and deaths.
In its analysis, the average Covid-19 mortality rate in November was 12 people per 1,000 confirmed cases, down from a peak of 74 per 1,000 in April, but higher than in recent months due to the rise in cases among older groups.
The CSO’s methodology uses ‘actual date of death’ here, rather than when the person’s death was notified.
Using this method, the CSO has found that the number of people who have died from Covid-19 has been greater than 20 for each of the last nine weeks. Dublin continues to be the worst hit county.
The median age of new confirmed Covid-19 cases was 33 years old for the week ending 11 December. (The ‘median’ is the middle number of a list of numbers, ie, ’3′ would be the median of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)
The median age for all cases is 39 years old, Galway has the lowest median age at 26, while Wicklow is highest at 44.
64% of all confirmed Covid-19 deaths to date were among people aged 80 years old or older.
Since the start of the pandemic, the total number of people who have died from Covid-19 in Ireland is 1,862, with a further 258 deaths cited as ‘probable deaths’ linked to the virus.
Speaking on Prime Time last night, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that “this winter in Ireland has seen no excess deaths”.
Sadly, there have been people who have died from Covid, but no more people have died this winter than any comparable winter for the past five years, and that shows the success, in fact, of what’s been done in the past couple of months.
“It’s very different to that first wave, where we did see a considerable number of excess deaths, and that leads to something to be welcomed.”
Underlying conditions and Covid mortality
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1,739 deaths of people with underlying conditions from 19,653 confirmed cases with underlying conditions.
The median age of those dying with underlying conditions is 83.
There were 1,617 deaths of people with underlying conditions in the over-65 age group. Of the 131 deaths in the 25-64 age group, 121 had underlying conditions.
In terms of underlying conditions, chronic heart disease was present in 44% of deaths.
Where we’re at
Ireland’s national incidence rate is 94.2 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 on this day last week and 79.7 the week previous.
That is a 19% increase since last week, when we reported a 24% drop over the previous 14 days. Between 5 December and last Saturday, the number of outbreaks across all settings has increased by 16%.
Comparing Ireland to other European countries – many of which in recent days have implemented tight restrictions leading up to Christmas – Ireland’s 14-day incidence rate is lower than France (236.3), Germany (341.1), the United Kingdom (348.2) and Italy (428.3), according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
With reporting from Gráinne Ní Aodha
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