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Three other coronavirus-related deaths and 1,066 new cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the Republic as the country entered its first day of a six-week lockdown.
This brings the total number of disease-related deaths in the state to 1,871 and the total number of confirmed cases to 54,476.
Of the cases reported Thursday, 244 were in Dublin, 104 in Galway, 98 in Cork, 92 in Meath, with the remaining 528 spread across the rest of the country.
The median age of those who tested positive is 32 years old, and 67% are under 45 years old.
Deputy Medical Director Dr. Heather Burns said: “The 14-day incidence was three per 100,000 at the end of June, today it is 302 per 100,000 population. The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 is now 100 times higher than four months ago. Limit your risk by staying home and following public health advice. “
Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of the Nphet modeling group, said the breeding number was now 1.3 to 1.4 nationwide. “If we work hard together to get the breeding number to 0.5, we should be able to reduce cases to less than 100 per day in six weeks.”
Earlier, HSE CEO Paul Reid apologized to the 2,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 and asked them to send a text message to their own close contacts.
“It’s an unfortunate situation, I’m sorry,” Reid said Thursday.
The Level 5 restrictions introduced on Thursday, which are among the most severe in Europe, will be enforced by new powers for gardaí that are expected to take effect next week, according to the government.
Thousands of commercial premises and other businesses closed their doors Wednesday night, while hundreds of thousands of workers will now be required to work from home starting Thursday.
The Irish Times reported on Tuesday that thousands of close contacts of positive Covid-19 cases over a three-day period would not be contacted by the HSE because the contact tracing system was overwhelmed by cases last weekend.
Instead, the HSE asked 2,000 to 2,500 people who had tested positive for Covid on Wednesday to tell their close contacts to contact their GPs immediately to request a test.
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show on Thursday, Reid said what happened with the contact tracing over the weekend was cause for concern, but it was not a decision made lightly.
“We didn’t catch up with the build over the weekend,” he said.
Despite recruiting an additional 70 contact trackers per week, the “big increase” in the last 10 days “got us caught.”
The hiring process has not caught up with the increase in cases, he said. The recruitment campaign that began on September 7 was attended by 2,000 people and 800 interviews were carried out over five weeks. There were now 500 working on contact tracing with the plan to build up to 800 in the next few weeks.
Exit lock
Meanwhile, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said that a Level 5 exit in December could be “region by region” depending on a variety of factors.
Donnelly said the decision to move to Level 5 restrictions was “a preemptive strike” and, while hospital services were “fine” today, had the decision not been made to close it, those services would have suffered.
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Donnelly said that at the end of the six-week period, the Government, together with the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), will carefully analyze the situation at that time to establish the best way out of the level 5.
Donnelly also denied that the contact tracing system was down. It was not correct to say this, since in the last six weeks there was a 400 percent increase in calls, he said.
For a brief period last weekend there was a “one-time situation” where demand had exceeded supply and a one-time “operational decision” was made to reset the system, Donnelly said, and HSE had assured him that it would. would do. will not happen again.
In an ideal world that would not have happened, he said, and he was willing to apologize to those who asked to call his own close contacts, but it was important to remember that the country was in the midst of a global pandemic and things weren’t working out. as usual. He said that he had spoken to some of the affected people.
Recruitment had increased, he said. There were now “significantly” more staff on site.
When asked about claims that some of those who worked in contact tracing had zero-hour contracts, the minister said that he had asked the HSE for a full report on the contracts that were given to those workers.
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