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LAST UPDATE | 4 Jan 2022
IRELAND HAS THE highest booster uptake in Europe, according to new data released by the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) this evening.
New figures show that 57% of over 18s in Ireland have received a Covid-19 booster jab, giving Ireland the highest level of vaccination uptake in the EU, with both Denmark and Austria behind at 53.1% and 53% respectively.
Over 85% of over 60s and 94% of over 70s and 80s have received a booster jab, with over 2.2 million boosters being administered in total.
It comes as hospitals have begun to suspend some elective care amid growing pressure on the health service due to Covid-19.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin praised vaccination centre staff, pharmacists and GPs for their work on the booster rollout.
He encouraged people to continue to get boosted, saying that it gives better protection against severe illness and hospitalisation with the Omicron variant.
“This is important because boosters are proving effective in reducing serious illness and hospitalisation against COVID and the Omicron variant,” said the Taoiseach in a tweet.
Impact on hospitals
Paul Reid said today that it remained unclear when Ireland would reach the peak of the current Omicron-driven wave of the virus.
The number of people in hospital with Covid-19 jumped by 80 overnight. As of 8am this morning, 884 people were in hospital with the virus, of whom 93 are in intensive care.
In a letter to health service managers, Reid said that where there are staff shortages in Covid-related services, staff must be redeployed from other areas to provide support.
Reid urged health managers to prioritise unplanned Covid care as he outlined that the number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 has jumped from 360 to 884 in 10 days.
He added that there are a “significant number” of health staff off work with Covid-related sickness.
On the letter sent to managers, Reid told RTÉ’s News at One:
It does set out clear priorities for all of the services to focus on and they are simply: time-dependent care, which is really important, emergency care, Covid-related care. And importantly, for us keeping testing and tracing and indeed vaccinations resources going.
Reid said that at the peak of the January 2021 wave of infection there were 2,020 Covid-19 patients in hospital with 220 in ICU and that “we are all trying to avoid” similar numbers this year.
He said there are indications that the severity of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 “is not as strong at an individual basis” than earlier strains but that “the force of impact of the volume of cases” on the health service represented a risk.
Leaders meeting
Reid was speaking as the leaders of the three government coalition parties met this afternoon to discuss the ongoing Covid-19 situation.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan were considering worker shortages caused by strict close contact rules and the prevalence of Covid-19 due to the highly-transmissible variant Omicron.
It is expected that the government will ask Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan to relax the isolation rules for fully vaccinated close contacts of confirmed cases of Covid-19.
A full Cabinet meeting is to be held tomorrow.
GP services
It comes as the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) said it has been asked to prioritise the vaccination of patients over the age of 16 as the Omicron variant spreads.
The GP group has stressed that they are still available to patients for urgent queries, and urged people with health concerns to contact their GP, but added that routine work such as insurance medicals, surveillance bloods and planned reviews will be deferred.
The Medical Director of the ICGP Dr Diarmuid Quinlan said “many GP practices now have staff working remotely due to Omicron”.
“While face-to-face consultations were the norm, good care can be delivered remotely. We understand that some people will be frustrated at their inability to contact their GP as readily as heretofore.
“To support our national response to Omicron, General Practice will prioritise Covid-19 work, while also assessing people with acute illness.”
Testing capacity
Despite a high number of daily Covid-19 cases being reported each day, the true number is estimated to be much higher again due to the lack of PCR tests being available to people at the moment.
Due to the current large volume of cases at present, reported daily case numbers are currently based on lab-confirmed positive swabs sent to the Covid Care Tracker rather than officially processed cases.
The latest figures sent to the Covid Care Tracker show that positivity rates for lab-based tests now almost 57%.
20154 positive swabs, 56.93% positivity on 35,402 tests.
— COVID-19 Data Ireland (@COVID19DataIE) January 4, 2022
7 day test positivity is 50.3%.
- Tuesday, January 4th 2022#COVID19Ireland pic.twitter.com/IABcR9pF1P
Damien McCallion of the HSE’s vaccination programme and test-and-trace system has said that PCR testing capacity has been increased to 300,000 tests per week but that access to testing “remains a challenge” due to the high levels of Covid-19 in the community.
As of yesterday, people aged 4-39 with symptoms of Covid-19 are being asked to book HSE antigen tests before booking a PCR tests if the antigen tests are positive.
The antigen tests will be sent out to the individual with McCallion saying the HSE has capacity to send over 350,000 tests per week.
“We did 39,000 PCR tests yesterday and we made a change in the system yesterday were those people in the lower risk groups from 4-39 now avail of antigen testing and we have a capacity there of 350,000. So in total this week, has a capacity for 650,000. But we still expect challenges to remain just given the high level of prevalence,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
McCallion added however that there is a limit to testing capacity and that this is being experienced “globally” due to the Omicron variant.
He said it is hoped that yesterday’s change will ease the pressure on PCR testing capacity but that the system is likely to be under strain for weeks.
“Hopefully that will alleviate it a little bit but I do expect the system still to be under strain over the coming weeks, just given the high numbers that we’re seeing coming through, the high level of positivity and just the anecdotal evidence I suppose that we’re hearing in all communities.”
With reporting from Rónán Duffy, Tadgh McNally and Press Association.
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Luke O’Neill reckons we’ll be sitting pretty by Spring. Living for that now
@JusticeForJoe: I think he said the same last January!!
@JusticeForJoe: no one could possibly know what will happen in future or whether there will be more variants. I wouldn’t be getting hopes up.
@Caitlin Far: “I wouldn’t be getting hopes up.”
Relative the the number of infections, hospital admittance is way down as are the ICU numbers. Omicron while much more infectious is also much less dangerous then Delta.
Everyone I know who has contracted the new variant says it’s a bad head cold or they’ve had no symptoms at all. How many of us have contracted it without even noticing?
There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful.
It’s time to leave the doom and gloom nonsense behind.
@Caitlin Far: No harm having a bit of hope.
@Caitlin Far: I think there’s a principle though whereby viruses, as they mutate, generally get more infectious and less dangerous as it’s counter-productive for it to kill/incapacitate/isolate its host. I’m no expert but think I’ve read that somewhere
@Laura McCarthy: and said that the year before that too. I’ve been saying just a few more months for 2 years now. It’s great having wool over my eyes.
@JusticeForJoe: That’s not how exactly evolution works. Mutations are random, most are neutral some are deleterious and a rare few are advantageous (making the organism more suited to answer an environmental pressure) so there is no reason to believe that there would be a constant movement towards less ” dangerous” variants. Also there is no reason that a mutant organism would replace the original organism unless there was competition for resources. Just look at the variation in all species that share common ancestors one didn’t cease to exist because another came along.
@Francis Devenney: You do realise that Delta replaced the original one and omicron is replacing Delta though, yeah?
@Sean: Thanks for the insight, Sean. Consider me schooled
@JusticeForJoe: Not correct at all. Replaced as the dominant variant. The others still exists
@JusticeForJoe: Alpha and Delta are still around although greatly reduced by vaccination and post infection immunity they also have several sublineages which are mainly neutral mutations, other variants have petered out because of deleterious mutations. There is absolutely no reason why a sublineage of Alpha could not become the next VOC. Evolution is Evolution is Evolution.The same rules apply to a virus as to any other species This may help
@Francis Devenney: You’d think that would silence Justiceforjoe but unfortunately it won’t.
@Francis Devenney: Joe is correct on the evolutionary tendency of less dangerous & highly infectious pathogens to become more endemic.
The less an illness incapacitates it’s host the more likely to dominate a population it is. Particularly if the level of mutation of potential future, more harmful viruses is not so great that recovery from infection of the less virulent strain accords a level of immunity.
i.e. less harmful, spreads further faster and reduces chance of future more harmful strains getting a foothold in the population.
@john doe: That can and has happened but is not always the case look at the flu, we can have a mild strain one year and the next year a severe one. The point is that mutation is random. It isn’t lead by environmental pressures although it may be selected by them. The first hummingbird to have a malformed beak wasn’t because there were bell shaped flowers nearby,but the fact that there were bell shaped flowers gave that deformed bird access to a food source that others couldn’t access. In the same way the most successful variant of a virus would be one where no immunity is conferred by infection by a previous iteration as is common with the flu for instance.
@Francis Devenney: the point is not that mutation is random! That is just the mechanism of evolution, the driving force is the natural selection of successful mutations with a competitive advantage.
The real point is that if you get a random mutation into a strain that kills it’s host instantly, that strain is not going to get very far.
@Caitlin Far: behold ! there is a new Cameroonian variant but hopefully even less deadly than our actual omicron buddy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-new-covid-variant-mutations-b1986241.html
@Francis Devenney: That’s really helpful. Genuine thanks
@JusticeForJoe: You’re welcome.
@john doe: You are assuming competition and forgetting that you can have more than one virus at the same time which can lead to antigenic shift another driver of evolution. Have a look at this article.
https://theconversation.com/heres-what-happens-when-two-very-different-respiratory-viruses-infect-the-same-cell-new-study-166463
@JusticeForJoe: Think he meant spring 2023?
@David CARLIER: oh great…. the Roger Milla varient. Side effects include bad dancing
@Dave Barrett: Possibly… but that’s not what he said.
@Francis Devenney: I’m not assuming anything. Just discussing the most common scenario of pathogen evolution. Of course you can have more than one virus at a time, you have numerous viruses living in you at any given time.
Thanks for the article though, very interesting.
@john doe: I should have phrased that better “be infected by” might have been more precise. Yes it’s fascinating work, When I first read about it I was nearly shocked that it hadn’t been done before.
@Caitlin Far: new variant in France
@Gerry McCaughey: I’ve had it for years so!!!
There are people taking advantage of this and getting a longer break from work.
@Ed: sssssssssch!!
@Ed:you would think differently if you got it
@Ed: Not those of us who work in jobs where we get zero sick pay. A colleague got it before Christmas, still hasn’t got the Social welfare Illness benefit payment – I literally can’t afford to get sick or be a close contact.
Looking forward to election time and remind these Gowls of all the damage they did in trying to run this country.
@Leo O’ Leary: they kept all my family safe and alive, thanks.
@TheDublinGirly: thats great for you and your family. Lots of other families aren’t safe and alive due to delayed treatments and delayed surgeries.
@IrishG26: That’s been the case since long before covid. Are you only noticing the state of the health service now?
@JusticeForJoe: No, I’ve always noticed the state of the health service…
@IrishG26: A lot of the blame for delayed surgeries and treatments lies with those who refused to be vaccinated, got seriously ill and ended up in hospital.
@TheDublinGirly: ooh aren’t you sassy
@IrishG26: delayed treatments and surgeries are mostly due to staff shortages due to illness and the amount of cases going through the hospital. How is that the government’s fault and if you were about to have open heart surgery would you be comfortable going under the knife knowing half the team had covid?
@IrishG26: What’s your point tho?
Mask wearing has shown to be such an effective tool. Glad we’ve inhibited our breathing and social interactions anywhere indoors for the last 2 years. It really has been worth it.
@John Egan: anywhere indoors? There are plenty of indoor places where you only have to wear a mask when moving around and can then take it off once sitting like pubs, restaurants, cafes etc.
@Sam Harms: oh yes, where the people sitting are instantly protected by a magic forcefield around each of the tables. Masks should be optional, not mandated.
@John Egan: Mask wearing is to protect others, not the user. You wear a mask to protect me, I wear one to protect you! I would agree with voluntary mask wearing if it was to protect oneself, but to protect others? Get a grip & put it on….
@Tony Harris: “You wear a mask to protect me, I wear one to protect you!”
Such horse manure. There should be a €5,000 fine issued for anyone uttering such a makey-uppy phrase that wouldn’t sound out of place on barney the dinosaur. We’d have the Cvoid19 debt down in no time.
@John Egan: spot on!
@LaoisWeather: Its actually true – your mask disperses the spray coming out of your mouth when you breath, talk etc) – the mask helps prevent it from reaching me, and mine you. Some really great videos online on the research done into droplet dispersal and demonstrations showing both with and without mask.
@John Egan: You come near me without a mask and I’ll show you how optional i consider it.
@JusticeForJoe: oh I would look forward to it.
@John Egan: Message boards are one thing, but we both know you’d be wearing a mask or getting a safe distance away from me once we’ve discussed it in person
@John Egan: You’ll have to obtain the access code to his nuclear bunker though John.
Good decision to reduce the isolation rules I think, particularly for close contacts with no symptoms and negative on antigen tests (good luck getting a PCR!). This variant is absolutely burning through the country, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was 100k cases a day and the hospitals are coping, the most difficult thing for them is the isolation rules. That says it all really.
This is the same government who refused to use Antigen testing through out 2021 are no rely totally on the test
@trebloc01: in fairness some of the concerns they had about antigen testing have proved to be correct. Reliability : A particular brand are giving false positives. Reliability of user: people are testing negative on one test and assuming this means they don’t have the virus . Reliability of case numbers and track and trace : people with positive results are not having it confirmed with a pcr. They were put under so much pressure to use antigens but they were also right with the concerns they had. Seems they are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t.
Isolation isn’t much fun choking on what was once a cheap bottle of wine because of its new price ,if it were only funny !.
Teletubbies gather to decide what to do.
Maybe it’s time they came out and said that they are just going for herd immunity at this stage
@James: not possible due to the emergence of new variants where have you been?
@Sean: is possible we’re already practically 50% infected already.
As for variants there will be always more variants this thing has travelled the world 3 times over and has a 7billion host testing ground plenty of scope for ongoing mutations.
It seems to occasionally find a host that’s sick and eventually and attach to some illness that makes it a new trait. First one seemed like and infection crossed with pneumonia this version seems to be crossed with a rather infectious but not all that dangerous headcold the worry is it might go on to mutate with something far more insidious like someone with Zika virus. Last thing we need is a variant that causes birth abnormalities. This covid thing is like a chameleon and takes what it finds out there and makes another variant quickly as it ripples through 7billion test cases. I don’t understand the mechanics of viruses but food for thought the more cases the sooner we will find a variant we don’t like at all.
@James: herd immunity isn’t possible with this as we all know, or at least should all know by now you can catch it multiple times. The best we can hope for is some rest bite after we pass this wave. But hopefully it will be longer before immunity wears off
I believe that vaccinated persons can catch and pass covid on as it is now known the vaccinated have been releasing Covid as much as unvaccinated the only difference is unvaccinated will get sicker requiring hospital care
@Margaret Foley: well that’s not true, vaccinated people definitely can catch and spread it but it is to a smaller degree
@Margaret Foley: people not requiring hospital care isn’t reason enough to get vaccinated. Also it’s been shown that vaccinated people are shedding virus for a much shorter period of time then unvaccinated (63%)
http://www.theconversation.com/amp/no-vaccinated-people-are-not-just-as-infectious-as-unvaccinated-people-if-they-get-covid-171302
The only vaccine in the world where you have the situation. Vaccinated people screaming for non vaccinated people to stay away from them in case they get sick. Its actually never happened in the history of vaccines. Some Universities in the US are even getting students to report on fellow students that are not vaccinated… we live in crazy times.
It’s unfortunate children waiting for surgeries and their families I feel sorry for plus other people waiting for care and attention that are now pushed to the back of the queue because of other’s complete self ish ness and lack of consideration for anyone but themselves. I hope all you control conspiracy theorists are very proud of yourselves.
@Anna Carr: That’s such an easy general sweeping statement to make : “other’s complete selfishness and lack of consideration for anyone but themselves” The majority i know around Christmas have done their best to keep in their bubble and avoid others but this variant is just so transmissible that so many are getting it
@Anna Carr: hopefully, we’re near the peak and numbers drop off dramatically so we can get back from emergency work only in hospitals. So many people I know have it and most have been really careful.
@Wiggit93: it’s not you I’m getting at. There are so many completely throwing caution to the wind. You’ve GOT to admit that.
@Doreen Murphy: I get that but those careful people have been infected by the careless people. I don’t feel great tonight and if I get it, I’m in a house with one immunosuppressed and one with a serious heart problem. I have to get medication and shop and stuff and I practically wear a hazmat suit going out but 3 or 4 came over to me to tell me that they had covid over Christmas and I’m like… AAARRRGGHHH… GO AWAY lol
@Anna Carr: I feel the same about people who are overweight due to lifestyle choices. Those who drink too much, smoke, don’t get half an hour of exercise a day, or those who engage in high-risk sports/activities. It’s so selfish of them that their choices are putting a strain on our healthcare service.
The next 2 years are crucial.
Clearly a dis functional so called health service with not enough front line staff but plenty of managers doing what certainly no saving lives
Government didn’t do anything to slow the spread of omicron. They didn’t have the foresight to see that would mean people can’t work. Solution? Make people go to work sick. Such a talentless and visionless government.
@Rob Gale: every country in the world has been overrun with omicron. Even China who kept all the other variants out are struggling with this one. Locking people in their homes is not getting rid of it. How is our democracy supposed to stop it?
@Rob Gale: you’re supposed to isolate if you are sick and the government is paying you €350 enhanced illness benefit a week to support you to do just that. How is that visionless it’s a dammed sight more than what other countries are offering.
Clearly a dis functional so called health service with not enough front line staff but plenty of managers doing feck all
Easily know Paul Reid doesn’t have cancer and isn’t awaiting tests !! This government is a joke
Good job we got all the vaccines and boosters to get us out of this mess.
Oh wait,………………
Clearly a dis functional so called health service with not enough front line staff but plenty of managers doing f… all
Great to see that most vaccinated people will probably end up being boosted. How do we persuade the others to take a first and second shot???
New variant found called IHU, hopefully doesn’t turn into ICU….
The Dunnes Stores Xmas shop is coming home to roost now …… only using Dunnes because that was trending on Twitter. I didn’t come across anybody counting numbers at the entrance to their shops ( Tesco/SuperValu/Dunnes) other than the Lidl/ Aldi traffic light system
Some serious questions need to be put to the big Supermarkets about their absence of Covid protection measures to prevent overcrowding in their shops
Biggest selling Xmas item in Dunnes ? I’m putting my money on their Antigen tests
Highest booster uptake but know digital update to prove it.
Embarrassing how slow we are, UK you receive the booster and following day it is on your digital travel pass.
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