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Nursing homes cannot protect themselves from Covid-19 outbreaks unless the public comes together to reduce rising levels of community broadcasts, warned Dr. Tony Holohan, chief medical officer.
A briefing by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) on Thursday revealed six more outbreaks in nursing homes and community hospitals as of October 17.
There are now 33 outbreaks with 451 linked cases, but the team emphasized that only a national response to the resurgence of the virus would help reduce the numbers.
“The degree to which this virus spreads the way it does in the community poses a risk to all of those settings,” said Dr. Holohan.
“We have seen an increase in the number of nursing homes that have contracted this infection. We have seen an increase in the number of people within nursing homes who have contracted this infection, and we have seen some mortality numbers associated with that.
“As long as we maintain a high transmission in the community as we have right now, it will be impossible for us to provide full protection to nursing homes,” even when protection measures have been put in place.
Support for nursing homes
Dr. Colm Henry, HSE’s clinical director, said 132 nursing homes were receiving some form of support, including 35 receiving “broad support,” such as from Covid response teams.
Another 1,066 cases of the virus were confirmed Thursday, bringing the total in the state to 54,476. Three additional deaths brought the total mortality to 1,871.
When Ireland entered the Level 5 Covid restrictions, Dr Holohan said they are concerned about public acceptance of the increasing demands for limited movement and behavior.
“It’s no wonder people find another request to do this all over again as an enormously difficult challenge,” he said.
“I’m not going to get into the prediction of failure; I will express optimism that we can do this. “
However, while Nphet’s goal is to lower daily case rates to 100 by December from the current level of around 1,000 to 1,200, data released Thursday illustrated the harsh trajectory of the virus.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Heather Burns noted that the 14-day infection incidence rate had surpassed 300 for the first time, now 302 compared to just three at the end of June.
“The risk of you being exposed to Covid-19 is now 100 times higher than four months ago,” he said.
The “R number”, which indicates the reproductive level of the virus, is currently between 1.3 and 1.4, with the ambition to see it drop to 0.5 after the latest round of social restrictions.
For every 1,000 positive cases in the age group 45 and under, 12 are hospitalized and one is admitted to intensive care. However, for those over 65, those numbers rise dramatically to 180 and 30 respectively. While Nphet considers deaths in the first age group to be “rare,” there are around 30 in the latter age group.
Exponential increase
In establishing the data, Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of Nphet’s Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group, showed an exponential increase in the number of cases of between 5 and 8 percent per day.
Hospitalization rates are growing similarly, by about 5% per day, and intensive care admissions by 3%.
Although the disease is mainly concentrated in the 19-24 age group, cases are now increasing in those over 65 and in nursing homes.
Due to measures previously introduced in Dublin, the patterns have been closely monitored.
“Unfortunately, one of the lessons from Dublin is that where the growth rate of the disease slowed to the point where Tier 3 measures were introduced in about 14 days, it started to increase again. . . as fast as the rest of the country, ”said Professor Nolan.
Dr. Holohan was asked about concerns regarding the contact tracing system and its ability to keep up, but said the most important focus now was not tracing, but public response to Level 5 measures and its ability to slow down community transmission.
“We have a much, much greater challenge now in terms of the level of community transmission in the population. . . and that is spreading in places that we have not been able to identify, “he said.
“We will not contact the track to get out of this; we have to take other measures as a society ”.
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