The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 4,163* confirmed cases of COVID-19.
As of 8am today, 545 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of whom 117 are in ICU.
Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health said:
“The additional efforts to adhere to the public health measures we have all been taking over the last few weeks are having a positive impact. We are beginning to see stabilisation in a range of key indicators of incidence of COVID-19.
"While this progress is very welcome, the level of disease in the community is still a concern.
"Stabilisation is happening at too high a level. The current high incidence is driven by the Delta variant, which, coupled with the presence of the Omicron variant, means that the trajectory of the disease remains uncertain. In the last seven days 478 people with COVID-19 were admitted to hospital with 46 people admitted to ICU.
"We know that public health measures we are all familiar with work to limit transmission of COVID-19 in the community. Choosing to follow the public health advice is difficult, particularly at this time of year, however, is it the key to changing the trajectory of the disease.
"Please continue to wash your hands regularly, keep your distance, choose outdoors instead of indoors for meeting up and open windows indoors, use good respiratory hygiene, reduce your social contacts and wear your mask if is recommended for you.
"In the over 75 age group, where people have been taking up the offer of a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in high numbers, we are seeing significant reductions in the incidence of disease. This is another positive development and further evidence that getting a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine helps to protect from the most severe effects of COVID-19. I urge everyone, when your turn comes, take the vaccine that is offered to you as soon as it is available.
"The seasonal flu (influenza) vaccine is also still available to adults to help protect you against flu and to reduce the spread of the flu in the community. Children and young people aged 2 to 17 can get the nasal flu vaccine for free.”
ENDS//
*Day to day variation in the reported number of cases of COVID-19 does not impact on key trend analysis. Analysing over a longer time period such as a week or 14 days, smooths out any variations introduced by processing times, and provides a more stable picture of the trend.
The number of notifications on CIDR will differ from other HSE data sources, such as positive SARS-CoV-2 results uploaded to the COVID Care Tracker, for several reasons including:
- deduplication of repeat positive tests in the same person
- differing upload schedules by the laboratories to CCT and CIDR – uploading of positive records on CIDR by laboratories is a more manual process than uploading to CCT. Uploading to CIDR typically occurs on the day or within one day of authorisation of the laboratory test result
- the time required for the two-step method of processing notifications on CIDR - this typically occurs either on the day or within one day of laboratories uploading positive records on CIDR
Statistics on booster vaccinations are now available on the COVID-19 data hub.