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A case of how a couple’s weekend resulted in 30 cases was one of the recent group examples described by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) on Wednesday.
Dr. Breda Smyth, director of Public Health for HSE West, cited a cluster of 30 cases that arose after a young couple left for a weekend and attended a house party. This resulted in six to eight cases and cases in three to four households. On the second day of their trip, they went with friends to the city center, resulting in four more cases.
The couple attended a bar, where six people at an adjacent table and four staff members tested positive. They then went to a “drink room”, where four more cases occurred.
Tonight, Dr. Breda Smyth @HSELive showed this slide.
Show how fast # COVID-19 spread between people over the course of a weekend, and how important it is to stay home if you are unwell or are in close contact with a case.
Make a plan today to limit your social contacts. pic.twitter.com/KtL3965bLP
– Department of Health (@roinnslainte) September 30, 2020
In another group of 24 cases related to intergenerational social mixing, the outbreak started in a small rural place where middle-aged people had gathered. There was socializing in a pub and at a workplace and there was more broadcast in the pub over the weekend.
Fourteen of the cases were directly related to socialization and 11 involved people between 45 and 70 years old. In the outbreak, there were three family groups, three schools were affected, and also a workplace.
A third example emerged from two student parties on the same night. There was a mix between the parties, which resulted in 21 cases among the attendees. One of these people later had dinner with a friend from college, who later went to class. Later, 15 of the 26 people in the class tested positive, giving 36 cases in all. The students were masked and observed social distancing, but public health officials believe the transmission occurred during recess.
At a press conference Wednesday, Acting Medical Director Dr. Ronan Glynn again urged people to cut their social contacts in half. “Reducing the number of people we meet and safely engaging with a small core group remains the cornerstone of our collective effort to reduce the spread of this virus and its impact on our health and the health of the people we care about, ” he said.
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