AS OF LAST night, there were 990 people with Covid-19 in hospital, with 167 people in ICU and a further 123 Covid-19 patients on ventilation. 

At the peak of the third wave, there were 2,032 people hospitalised with Covid-19. The peak number of people in ICUs was 221.

Yesterday, there were a further 1,006 new cases of Covid-19 confirmed in Ireland, with 54 people confirmed to have Covid-19, with 45 of these deaths having occurred in January. 

The positivity rate over the past seven days has fallen to 5.8%, compared to a total of 6.5%.

There have been a total of 3,794 deaths related to Covid-19, and the total number of confirmed cases is now at 205,939.

As of Sunday, 240,487 doses of a Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in Ireland: 153,654 people have received their first dose, while 86,833 people have received their second dose.

Dr Cillian De Gascun has said that the vaccination rollout would be a year-long process. 

“We’ve seen all the challenges now with the case numbers around the world, challenges to vaccination and I think we need to be looking at a 12-month project, in essence,” he said.

“But we also know that it’s going to take time to get to that threshold of community level protection, which realistically, with the new variants, probably needs to be between 80 and 85%.”