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One more death has been confirmed as a result of the coronavirus. But today’s death dates back to June, so now it’s been two weeks since there was a death from the disease. However, another 89 cases have been confirmed and this brings the number of infections to 29,114.
The number of coronavirus patients who have died in the Republic amounts to 1,777.
Meanwhile, Ireland is now in the “most challenging phase” of dealing with the spread of Covid-19, according to a senior government official.
Taoiseach Department Undersecretary General Liz Canavan said the national lockdown was “simple to implement in many respects, despite the impact we knew it would have,” but Ireland is now in a different phase where we must live with the virus.
She spoke as Health Service Executive Director Paul Reid warned that this will be “a more difficult winter than we have faced” as HSE attempts to expand services stalled due to Covid-19.
“We are living with Covid, we just have to have hope and trust and live differently and plan differently,” he told RTÉ radio.
Community testing centers that were established during the pandemic would be used over the winter to screen people for respiratory illnesses and filter out what is and is not related to Covid, he said.
“We need a working economy and a working society. We need it to support our health service because we know the impact of the blockade. We need to find that balance. People seek absolute clarity when we can only give them some unpredictability; that’s the phase we’re in. “
Ms Canavan said only six months had passed since the first Covid case was detected in Ireland.
“This week it seems that approximately 40 percent of people believe that the worst is yet to come. Covid is still with us and we must learn to navigate life for the moment, side by side with it. “
He added that 2020 has been a year of “unprecedented difficulties” for publicans and urged businessmen to take advantage of the government’s € 16 million support package announced last week.
What about the Leaving Cert?
Regarding the Leaving Certificate, he said that students “can rest assured that a great deal of work has been done to deliver a calculated grade model that has fairness and fairness at its core.”
“Under the computed grade model, the estimated grades for schools will be adjusted as planned to ensure that a consistent standard is applied across schools across the country when judging student performance. The model will not include data on how a school has historically performed on Leaving Certificate, placing greater emphasis on the estimated scores provided by schools to individual students. This eliminates any risk that a student’s Leaving Certificate results may be affected by the performance of Leaving Cert classes at their school in previous years, ”said Ms. Canavan.
But he acknowledged that there are concerns about the operation of some schools.
“The response to confirmed cases or outbreaks of Covid-19 in a school will be directed and managed by the HSE. . . by their teams in the context of a comprehensive public health risk assessment. “
In Northern Ireland, two new coronavirus-related deaths were confirmed on Wednesday. This brings the death toll in the North to 562.
The Northern Health Department also reported that 71 people had tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 7,365.
So far 237,003 people have been tested for the virus in Northern Ireland.
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