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PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIALS have reported a further 2,121 cases of Covid-19 in Ireland.
Eight additional deaths have also been confirmed in the latest figures released this evening by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET).
This brings the total number of deaths associated with the disease to 2,616 and the total number of Covid-19 cases to 174,843.
All eight deaths occurred in January in people between the ages of 49 an 93.
Deaths of people with Covid-19 are not reported in real time but may have occurred over a period of several days.
The number of deaths reported on a given day, therefore, does not necessarily mean that a person with Covid-19 died within the previous 24-hour period or even the preceding few days.
In the early days of the pandemic, the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan urged families, despite the difficulty, to register their loved ones deaths as early as possible so that health officials could gain an accurate picture of mortality.
Essentially, there is a delay between when a person dies from Covid-19 and the National Public Health Emergency Team being informed of their passing.
Meanwhile, NPHET also said that there are currently 1,975 people in hospital with the virus, including 200 in intensive care.
Of the cases notified today:
The five-day average of cases in Ireland is 3,149 per day. The median age of cases in the past 14 days is 39, and the mean age is 41.
Speaking this evening, Holohan said that there are now more people in hospital than at any other stage during the pandemic.
“The risk that this disease poses to the individual who is infected has not changed,” he said.
“What has changed is that we are experiencing a much greater level of community transmission and as a result we are seeing higher numbers of people with severe illness who require hospitalisation or admission to intensive care and higher numbers of mortality.
“Please continue to stay at home and drive down this infection in our community.”
Contains reporting from Cónal Thomas.
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Lines outside coffe shops. Apart from the odd large site all small builders are working away. Hairdresser friend and all from her salon doing house visits. Not a care in the world
@ChuckE: why are you posting it here? Do something about it if it’s that bad…
@ChuckE:..lines outside Pharmacies and Supermarkets also.Are essential workers not entitled to a coffee break? Some small builders allowed to continue under certain conditions. Report your hairdresser friend rather than posting about it here.
@ChuckE: Isn’t a line outside better than them all being crammed inside? If you’re so worried about it, take it up with nphet and the government. They’re the ones who decided to leave cafes open for takeaway.
@ChuckE: chill. The restrictions of the last few weeks have started to impact the case numbers and will continue to. Everyone just needs to be sensible, assume everyone has it. Panic worry and scaremongering by authorities does not help and desensitised people.
@ChuckE: Blind thrust in Authority is the greatest enemy of the truth (Einstein).
At this stage we should be safeguarding our freedoms and liberties.Most people are responsible in their dealings with COVID and don’t need this constant lecturing from CMO.
@Horseshoe: yes as clearly evidenced by the recent surge. Wake up man!
@ChuckE: Best regards to you , and stay safe.
@NotMyIreland: You missed my point Chappie . Read again — it’s not me that’s asleep.
Open your mind.
@Horseshoe: Most people isn’t enough though. Only until someone close to them is affected will they listen.
@Horseshoe: Well said
@ChuckE: lines outside coffee shops indicates they are queuing to get in because if the restrictions. Which is right. When did you see limes ore covid.
@Jeff Nolan: you can get a coffee in every supermarket in the country. Kenko also do a really nice instant. Builders are allowed to build if the home owner can occupy by the 30th. People like you are the cause of today’s 50 deaths and over 3000 new cases. Look for any and every excuse you can not to do the decent thing. Real top bloke jeff
@Damo: great reply John now finish your dinner
@Nioe: relax fella. Just pointing out the obvious, touched a nerve did it ?
@Horseshoe: in the meantime my wife has to deal with putting people she knows into ICU where she works and explaining to their loved ones via tablet what their chances are. But sure it’s all a conspiracy right. I’ve done tinfoil left over from dinner if you want it
@Eugene Norman: no hand sanitizer outside and groups of people chatting. If I need to explain the dangers there really is no point in engaging with you. It’s in people’s best interest to stay away from each other
@Carol Cunningham:
Are you STILL here making comments…?
@ChuckE:
Mr Horseshoe & his fellow travellers can barely tie their shoe laces without drooling. Inadequate smarts , education, life experience & meaningful responsibility will do that to you. You wasting your time explaining reality to these cret1ns.
Can these Chief Medical Officers offer a bit more medical advice than just ‘stay at home’?The health of the nation is being negatively affected by this advice in many other ways not related to Covid.
Also, can we please be offered expert medical advice on how to live healthier and boost our immune system to give us a better chance to fight the virus if we contract it?
Surely there is some kind of advice they can offer regarding our diet and possible supplements we could be taking? There’s a lot of good advice out there but very little is being recommended by our healthcare services.
Healthcare is about more than just hospital beds and medical staff. They are the last line of defence but we can help them by taking better care of ourselves.
@Jim Smith: vitamin D at 5000iu a day is proven to be helpful.
@Cosmos20202020: Pitiful comment. Because he asks a very valid question which is in the interest of protecting people you immediately associate him with being a Covid denier and/or conspiracy theorist.
Says a lot about how what some in society have become.
@Jim Smith: excellent programme on BBC1 called the truth about boosting your immune system all evidence based, it’s not rocket science Jim, eat a healthy balanced diet with plenty fruit & veg, moderate exercise, good sleep pattern and limit alcohol which causes inflammation, and take Vit D supplement that’s it you can’t magically boost it any other way, in just 6 weeks on the programme their volunteers had seen reduced inflammation in blood samples by following that simple advice
@Cosmos20202020: Grow up you cl own
@Cosmos20202020: What a braindead comment!
@Jim Smith: Someone else posted this NZ doctor’s tips. I am not a medical person but they seemed credible to me: https://www.facebook.com/Parentune/videos/970009506761903/
Thanks for all the advice. Surely some of this information can be offered to the general public.
The message needs to come from our healthcare experts to have the desired impact.
@Woolly: say ud great crack out drinking
@Jim Smith: Agree but they will only give general advice like they would with the flu. There haven’t been clinical trials of how people to react to it. Keeping healthy and eating well as usual.
@Jim Smith: Best comment I’ve read in a long long time . Take care of your own self & personal accountability
Is the key point for everyone
@Jim Smith: those chief medical officers have more to do than waste their time advising you how to look after yourself healtwise
Your a big boy now so either google it or pay a dietitian to tell you and quit moaning
@Paul Mcnevin: there’s been literally hundreds of studies on vitamin D with mega dosing used on many with almost no issues.
There is over 40 Vitamin D and covid clincial trail’s.
The idea people would not take vitamin D over winter to ensure their Immune function is functional, sufficient blood levels of vitamin D is negligence on a gross scale.
https://tilda.tcd.ie/news-events/2020/2035-vitd-consortium-statement/
Don’t stay at home. Go outside as often as possible and get some fresh air and exercise. Just avoid indoor spaces and crowds unless necessary.
@Mark Curley: Just no like. Follow the guidelines and stop making up your own $h1t. No wonder it’s out of control, people could interpret that in many ways. You are not the expert and don’t have all the information!
This all comes back to money and the economy at the end of the day,most of my family work in retail and factory work and all still going to work, its a joke, mixing with 300 people in factory environment is fine but token gestures and media full of school talk and stay at home pleas, this is not a lockdown in any shape or form, I work with one guy who has travelled freely the throughout the country from shopping to car purchase etc etc and hasn’t seen one checkpoint and laughs whenever I mention coronavirus to him, I’m sure he is only acting as millions of others are, so nphet/government stop with the media posturing telling us how grave the situation is, this is all a smokescreen, if things are so bad just lockdown the country properly for 1 month or else put a sock in it
@Hugo Bugo: well retail has been kept open. You are right about checkpoints – half assed efforts this time.
Half a lockdown isn’t helping
@IAmSCozzie:
There has been little, if any, scientific evidence provided to show that any type of a lockdown, half, full, or complete with a brass band, is any type of an effective way to combat the pandemic.
In fact most of scientific papers and studies published on the subject since March have come to the conclusion that the effectiveness of lockdowns as a strategy to cope with Covid ranges somewhere between Nil and Negligible.
Perhaps NPHET and the HSE have the scientific proof that lockdowns work, and for some bizarre reason are keeping it to themselves.
But, as it stands, the level of scientific proof available to the general public to show that lockdowns are an effective strategy, is somewhere on a par with the scientific evidence available to show that the earth is flat.
@Garry Coll: well said. We’ll spend the next year’s post-Covid cleaning up the mess we’ve made it during it.
@Garry Coll: I am not a fan of lockdowns myself but all the scientific evidence prove that they work.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7
This is a study from June but there is no reason to believe that things have changed now.
The criticism that I have heard about lockdown is that it’s actually that staying at home that works against the virus, rather than government lockdowns. In many countries, it’s possible that people staying at home because they are scared would have achieved most of the results that are achieved by lockdowns. But that’s a bit of a false opposition – between self-imposed and government-imposed lockdowns.
Of course lockdowns – and for that matter, fear of infection – have a huge impact on our society and our economies, but they do work against the virus in the absence of a vaccine or of sufficient spare capacity in our health system
@Garry Coll: according to the scientific evidence you mention, lockdowns (whether “spontaneous” or government-induced) saved over 3 million deaths by May 2020.
“We find that across 11 countries 3.1 (2.8–3.5) million deaths have been averted owing to interventions since the beginning of the epidemic”
@Garry Coll: Such tripe.
@Giovanni Giusti:
Thanks Giovanni, it’s good to see that such a study actually exists.
@Garry Coll: you got links there? Because it seems to me that the empirical evidence is that by locking down we reduced the infection rate last year, as did many countries, and by opening up this Christmas it increased.
@Eugene Norman:
The links are all at the website of Ivor Cummins, thefatemperor.com.
There are over twenty five of them
I can’t list them all individually here.
@Giovanni Giusti:
I managed to get a look at the study you have given the link to, Giovanni.
I would not in any way be qualified to critique the paper, but I think that the paper appears to be seriously undermined by the review of it’s methodology and conclusions contained in the link within the article itself, entitled “Matters Arising”.
Change the record Tony
Horrific now. All island approach needed
Lots of Northern reg cars at a beauty spot not far from me yesterday.
People are not staying at home. Traffic jams approaching garda checkpoint near Midleton yesterday.
@Leonard O’mahony: Any chance they were going home from work
@Michael McGrath: well, yes. That’s the problem.
Vaccine, vaccine,vaccine ,if we have enough supply lash it out
Why are we opening special needs schools and classes so?? Stay at home is their Mantra yet they want to endanger kids and teachers by sending them to school!!! Clowns the lot of them!!!!
But travel from the UK to Ireland via the North is still unregulated. Dangerous hypocrisy.
Great to see them speak with 1 voice.
Lockdown is not working people have been told to stay indoors since last march its not working can they that its not
Good that the CMO’s are talking as one.
Pity politicians and authorities could not do the same.
76 deaths on the island today, that is so sad.
New variant expected from Brazil, can they just not insist on compulsory isolation for all arrivals.
There are plenty empty hotel’s, why are we depending on voluntary isolation which obviously does not work.
is that the same tony holohan THAT was in charge wen all the crap with the cervical checks scandal happen and look what happened people dying he should have stayed away wen he had he time off dr death
@John O Brien: just follow the rules
This is never-ending. What happens if the vaccines aren’t effective, which could be the case. If I was old or vulnerable I would not want the world to stop because of this. There will be a breaking point.
@Nickwhick: I think the vaccines are effective alright or they wouldn’t be using them ,extensive research,human trials etc mean they work!
You can’t expect to lock innocent people down or restrict their movements without any pushback…we are animals ffs. As brutal as it sounds we can only look after ourselves and our loved ones and let fate be the decider…
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