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A report from the Department of Public Health in the Midwest has described how a person who did not restrict their movements after returning from abroad led to 56 people in ten homes and a sports team contracting Covid-19.
Details of the case are contained in a report on how Dr. Mai Mannix, the region’s director of public health, handled the pandemic until August.
It shows how Covid-19 can spread so quickly and easily between homes and friends in the community.
The index case had mild symptoms, but had no temperature and went out to socialize with friends. He later tested positive and three of his friends also tested positive.
Another contact went to a party with friends a couple of hours after taking a test, which came back positive, and ended up infecting several more people.
The index case had an extended family that was visited regularly and some members also tested positive.
A relative, who had no symptoms, played a game with his local team and several teammates became infected.
Then those team members infected several others.
The report said that in total 56 people were infected by the index case, affecting up to 10 homes and a sports team.
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The report says they continue to see a steady stream of cases, mostly now linked to close contacts with confirmed cases and community transmission, as opposed to travel-related infection and transmission in healthcare settings in the early days of the pandemic. .
There have been 3,312 cases of Covid-19 infection in the three counties, Limerick, Clare, and Tipperary.
As of August, nearly a fifth (19%) were hospitalized, higher than the national average at 12%, but fewer (6%) were admitted to the ICU, compared to 13% nationally.
The report said that the management of the pandemic put considerable pressure on public health personnel across the region, which experienced an unprecedented workload, where service increased to a seven-day week with extended work hours.
They took thousands of calls from concerned members of the public and healthcare professionals.
Redeployed staff helped with this in the early months of the pandemic, but most of these staff have returned to their substantive positions.
Dr Mannix said it has long been recognized that public health departments have been understaffed for some time and this pandemic highlighted the urgent requirement for adequate and consistent staffing at all grades.
He said the recent announcement and approval to hire staff for the public health department is very welcome.
Dr Mannix also said that the pandemic also highlighted significant underinvestment in an appropriate national IT case and an outbreak management system for public health.
Using multiple ICT systems to capture case and outbreak data creates undue administrative burden within the department.
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