HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE confirmed that a further 524 cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in Ireland.

The Department of Health reported that there are currently 107 patients being treated for Covid-19 in hospital, 38 of whom are in ICU, remaining the same as yesterday.

The figures from the department did not contain any information about recorded deaths connected to Covid-19.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said that the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) is continuing to monitor variants of concern.

“NPHET is closely monitoring variants of concern, and are concerned about possible higher transmissibility of the so called Indian variant and its spread in other countries as well as early reports of its impact on vaccine effectiveness,” said Holohan.

“The public are keeping the disease under control and the HSE is increasing the number of people vaccinated every day. But the variant may nevertheless pose a risk to the progress we have made.

“NPHET will keep a close eye on this as we move towards the end of May and consider the advice we need to provide to Government on any further easing of restrictions.”

There have been a total of 72 cases of the so-called Indian variant identified so far.

Despite this, Chair of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, Professor Philip Nolan says that indicators of the disease are stable.

“Despite recent challenges to the Health Service’s IT systems, we continue to monitor key indicators of the disease in Ireland. The number of people hospitalised and in ICU are stable, the daily incidence is stable and the amount of people protected through vaccination continues to grow.”

Professor Pete Lunn from the Behavioural Research Unit of the ESRI has said that there are indicators that more people are beginning to socialise, this is much strong evidence that this is primarily in those who have already been vaccinated.

“The data also reveal [sic] that these increases are much stronger among people who have been vaccinated. Most people who are not yet vaccinated are continuing to be cautious. Our data are consistent with the majority of people waiting until they are vaccinated before increasing their activity again.”

Data relating to the number of Covid-19 deaths, as well as case numbers by county, have been affected by last week’s cyber attack on Ireland’s health service.

With systems down due to the recent ransomware attack, the HPSC are reporting daily cases to the department based on those daily positive lab results. Validation of these results will re-commence once systems are back up and running. 

The cyber attack is not affecting the vaccination portal but complete figures on the number of vaccines carried out in the past week are not available. 

CEO Paul Reid said yesterday that the HSE cannot collate the number of vaccines carried out by GPs in the past seven days but that it has been an “extremely positive week” for the vaccination programme. 

Excluding GP vaccinations from the past week, he said that, up to Wednesday, 43% of the adult population have received one dose with 15% fully vaccinated.

With reporting by Rónán Duffy