THERE ARE NOW 1,823 people with Covid-19 in hospital, according to the latest figures from the Covid Data Hub. There were 154 discharges from hospital and 97 admissions in the past 24 hours.
Of this number, 216 people with Covid-19 are in ICU. There have been 15 admissions and 15 discharges from ICU in the past 24 hours.
As of 2pm yesterday, 1,905 Covid-19 patients were hospitalised, of which 219 are in ICU.
At last night’s NPHET briefing, Professor Philip Nolan said he expects hospital admission figures to “remain very high for weeks to come”.
“The number of admissions per day may be starting to decline, that may be beginnings of a slow decrease in numbers in intensive care. But as I mentioned … we expect those numbers to remain very high for weeks to come.”
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today, HSE Chief Operations Officer Anne O’Connor said that the high number of patients in ICUs, coupled with the high level of absenteeism from staff were culminating to put pressure on the system.
There are around 30 ICU beds free across all Irish hospitals.
Level 5 extended, further restrictions
The Cabinet sub-committee agreed last night to introduce mandatory quarantine for people travelling into the country without a negative Covid-19 test, or those travelling from South Africa or Brazil.
Passengers will have to pay for their own stay in quarantine hotels which are to be policed by private security firms.
Travellers will be required to pay for a Covid-19 test after five days and if they get a negative result will be permitted to leave. Those who receive a positive test will required to remain in quarantine at their own expense for up to two weeks.
Speaking on the Claire Byrne programme last night, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the change on mandatory quarantine was due to the variants that have cropped up in the UK, Brazil and South Africa.
But Varadkar stressed that quarantine isn’t “a silver bullet”, adding that because of the communities who live along the Northern Ireland border “it would be a bit like soup in a sieve”.
Explaining some of his concerns about mandatory quarantine for everyone flying in to Ireland, Varadkar said:
“If we did it, it would probably be for a year. I think once you make a very dramatic public health measure like that, it’s hard to reverse. I think we probably wouldn’t reverse it until everyone was vaccinated, and then we’d be heading into the winter, and we wouldn’t want to open up flights for Christmas.
“You can only have about 500-600 people a day. So that means even some travel that we now consider ‘essential’ would not be permitted. So people going to London for an interview, people who are travelling for education, people who want to see a dying relative – we wouldn’t be able to guarantee that that travel will be possible.”
“It’s detention centres, really,” he said of the facilities themselves. “They’re in hotels, but it’s not tourism.”
The plan is for schools and construction to return from March, and some retail after that. Concerts and large outdoor events aren’t expected to be allowed this summer.
Epidemiological situation
Yesterday, a further 1,372 new cases of Covid-19 and seven deaths were confirmed.
The positive rate overall is 6.6%, and the positive rate in the past seven days has been 9.2%.
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