HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE confirmed an additional 21,302 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland today.

As of 8am, 884 people were in hospital with the virus, 90 of whom are in intensive care.

Yesterday, there were 16,986 cases of the virus reported, with 804 people in hospital with Covid-19 and 93 in ICU.

Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health said that the surge is having a major impact on essential services such as schools and colleges. 

“As one of our key essential services – the education sector prepares to restart in person education this week, it is important that we continue to minimise, as much as we can, discretionary mixing indoors with people from other households.

“We saw a significant reduction in incidence of COVID-19 in primary school going children through December.

“However, given the very high and rising incidence of COVID-19 across all age groups in the community, it is inevitable that children will pick up this infection from household contacts in the days and weeks ahead. We also know, as a result, that there will be cases and outbreaks in schools and childcare settings,” he said.

Holohan said that global experts are aligned with Irish public health officials in believing that educational institutions are safe. 

“The Irish and international experience of the pandemic continues to give us reason to believe that schools are a lower risk environment for the transmission of COVID-19 and that the majority of children who are infected experience a mild form of this disease.

“It is also important to note that children between the ages of 5 – 12 are now eligible for vaccination. You can get more information on www.hse.ie.

“Children who have symptoms of COVID-19, or who live in a household where someone has received a positive or “detected” test result either on a PCR or an antigen test should not attend school.

“It is important that all of us continue to support schools, business owners, family and friends to keep to the spirit of public health advice. We must continue to restrict our movements to the greatest extent possible, by limiting the people we interact with from other households if we are to suppress transmission of COVID-19 and sustain our essential services,” he added.

The latest figures come in the wake of warnings from NPHET that the PCR testing system has been overwhelmed by the volume of the disease in the country, and that the true volume of cases is up to 40% higher.

Changes to guidelines around who should seek a PCR test were announced last Thursday in a bid to ease the pressure on the system, including advice for symptomatic people in younger age groups to instead take regular antigen tests and only seek a PCR test if they receive a positive antigen result first.

The daily case number figures released each evening are likely to give an underestimate of the level of Covid-19 in Ireland compared to earlier periods in the pandemic when the daily figures were much lower.