THE HEALTH MINISTER has said he expects to see measures introduced this week targeted at the spread of coronavirus infection in nursing homes and other residential care settings.
Minister Simon Harris said he is “concerned to see a significant amount of infection now breaking out in a number of nursing homes”.
On Friday, Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said there were nine clusters of infection in nursing homes.
This evening, Minister Harris said the government needs to take action to address this situation and tomorrow he will be meeting with the nursing home sector.
He said the CMO will also have a number of meetings about this issue before the National Public Health emergency Team (NPHET) meeting on Tuesday.
“I expect you’re going to see a number of measures aimed minding and protecting those who are in our nursing homes and also other long term residential facilities – and also our staff who work there,” Harris said.
“We need to make sure we protect all the people in our nursing homes, we also need to make sure that we don’t have infection spreading from our nursing homes and into our community.
“This is a big project we’ve got to work on this week, it’s going to be a major priority for me and I’m going to give it an awful lot of my time.”
There are 2,615 confirmed cases of the Covid-19 virus in Ireland and there have been 46 deaths associated with the virus to date. Ten of those deaths were today – six in the east, three in the northwest and one in the south.
The median age of today’s deaths is 77.
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