DUBLIN: The death toll from COVID-19 is rising in Ireland. The health department has confirmed that 51 more COVID patients died in the country yesterday. With this, the death toll from the virus has risen to 2,828.
Meanwhile, National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) has warned that the number of deaths from COVID-19 in January could reach 1,000 by the end of this month. There have been 532 deaths so far in January.
Yesterday, further 2,608 people were confirmed with Coronavirus in Ireland. The number of confirmed cases has risen to 181,922 since the onset of the pandemic.
As of yesterday, 1,943 COVID-19 patients were in hospital with 214 in ICU. The 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 people in Ireland is 1,441. The R number has been reduced to between 0.5 and 0.8. Extremely higher rates of infection have been recorded in Waterford (1,582.1), Limerick (1,450.5) and Cork (1,212) per 100,000.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tony Holohan in a recent letter to the Minister of Health said: “Given the large number of recently notified outbreaks in long term residential care facilities and hospitals, we can, unfortunately, expect to see, in addition, a large scale of mortality in these settings. It is therefore anticipated that a total of at least 500-1,000 deaths may occur in the month of January.”
CMO asked people who would like to book vacations abroad to reconsider their holiday plans. At the same time, he admitted that it was very difficult to follow the guidelines. “As we move into vaccinations we know we have hope, but we know we will have restrictions for a considerable length of time,” he said.
Meanwhile, Philip Nolan, chair of the Nphet Epidemiological Modelling Group, warned that the impact of the higher numbers earlier this month would continue in the coming days. “The incidence is 10 to 15 times higher than we were seeing in early December and 200 times higher than what we were seeing in July,” he warned.
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