LAST UPDATE | 1 Dec 2021

PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIALS have confirmed 3,793 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland today.

The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) said that there had been 55 deaths notified to them in the past week, bringing Ireland’s total to 5,707. In the previous week, there had been 43 deaths notified.

As of 8am today, 578 patients are in hospital with Covid-19, of whom 117 are in intensive care.

Yesterday, 5,471 new Covid-19 cases were confirmed, 579 Covid-19 patients were in hospital with 122 in ICU. On Monday 566 Covid-19 patients were in hospital with 117 in ICU.

This time last week, there were 611 Covid-19 patients in hospital, of whom 132 were in ICU.

Speaking at tonight’s Fine Gael Parliamentary Party meeting, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar noted that the Covid-19 situation was stable or improving slightly and Ireland is doing substantially better than NPHET optimistic models and projections in terms of cases, numbers in hospital, ICU and deaths.

For this reason, he said he was sceptical that imposing new restrictions on people’s freedoms, family life and businesses would be warranted at this time.

He said, however, there was a concern though that things have stabilised at a high level and if things went wrong in the run up to Christmas, they would go wrong from a very high base.

He said there was a genuine cause for concern with people socialising more with Christmas and the Government would carefully listen to NPHET’s advice on the matter tomorrow before making any decisions.

The first case of the new Omicron variant in Ireland was confirmed by NPHET earlier today. Whole genome sequencing was carried out on eight samples, and one was identified as Omicron. It’s understood to be a case related to recent travel.

“Today’s notification of a confirmed case of the SARS-CoV-2 Variant B.1.1.529 (Omicron) should not change how we are responding to the public health measures that are already in place,” Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said.

“The best mitigation we have against transmission of this virus, regardless of the variant, are the public health measures that we are so familiar with and more importantly, that we know will work.

“For at least the next two weeks, if we can all make a concerted effort to reduce our contacts, then I am hopeful that we can make a real difference to incidence of disease in Ireland.”

Holohan added that there is no group who should feel the public health advice does not apply to them: “It is only if we act together that we can keep ourselves, our loved ones and health and social care facilities safe.”

Deaths related to Covid-19 are being announced on a weekly basis, with health authorities citing the HSE data breach in May as the reason for this. The deaths announced today are the number of Covid-19 related deaths reported to health authorities in the past seven days.

It does not necessarily mean all deaths confirmed today occurred in the past week, as the system in Ireland allows a period of time for families to register the death of a relative.

With reporting by Hayley Halpin and Rónán Duffy