PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIALS have confirmed that two more people have died with Covid-19 in Ireland.

A further 511 new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed, according to the latest figures from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET).

The total number of Covid-19 cases now stands at 237,695.

The number of people who have died has reached 4,715.

Last night, Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn appealed to the public to adhere to public health advice this weekend to ensure a safe Easter.

“Over the past year the vast majority have consistently done all they could to protect themselves and their families from Covid-19, please do so again this weekend,” he tweeted. 

Glynn urged people to “keep your contacts low and only meet up with others outdoors”.

The latest Covid-19 infection figures come as the HSE said that the country will next week top one million total vaccine doses administered.

The vaccine numbers are being closely watched as politicians and health officials have consistently said the supply of vaccines is to ramp up in the second-quarter of the year beginning in April.

The HSE’s CEO Paul Reid tweeted this afternoon that over 900,000 total doses will have been administered by this weekend and that it will pass the million mark thereafter.

He said this was partly due to a strong Good Friday on vaccination figures.

Yesterday, Good Friday, we had one of our highest days so far for the vaccine administration. We'll have well over 900,000 completed by this weekend. During next week, we'll have administered over 1M doses. April & May will see the programme scale up further again @HSELive

— Paul Reid (@paulreiddublin) April 3, 2021

There is a two-day lag in the publication of vaccination figures, so the most recent day for which we have detailed figures is Wednesday 31 March.

By Wednesday a total of 865,460 of doses were administered, which breaks down as 619,003 first doses and 246,457 second doses.

By percentage of population, 13% of the country has received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and just over 5.1% are considered fully vaccinated.