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Another 1,025 Covid-19 cases and no additional deaths have been recorded in the state, the Health Department said.
In a statement late Sunday, the department said a total of 57,128 cases have been confirmed in Ireland and 1,882 people with the disease have died.
Of the last cases, 255 were in Dublin, 147 in Cork, 77 in Galway, 54 in Kildare, 53 in Donegal and the remaining 439 were distributed in 21 counties. The average age of those infected was 31 years.
A total of 315 people with the disease are currently in state hospitals, with 38 in intensive care units. The department said there were 16 additional hospitalizations in the past 24 hours.
The Northern Ireland Department of Health said on Sunday there had been six more Covid-19-related deaths in the previous 24-hour reporting period and 923 more cases. The department’s recorded death toll now stands at 645 and there have been 33,209 confirmed cases in the north. There are currently 309 Covid-19 patients being treated in Northern Ireland hospitals, with 34 people in intensive care.
Several key indicators related to the spread of Covid-19 in the state have stabilized in recent days.
The proportion of people who test positive, along with the number of close contacts per person, important indicators of the rate of transmission of the disease in the community, has decreased.
HSE Chief Executive Officer Paul Reid pointed to the eight-day drop in the test positivity rate Sunday morning, which stood at 6.2 percent for the previous seven days on Saturday.
Mr. Reid also noted a drop in the number of close contacts, from 4½ per confirmed case to three.
“Most of the close contacts are domestic. Still very early but good. We’re all part of the solution. Let’s get on with this, ”he said on Twitter.
Indicators
Officials caution not to read too much into single-day figures, but the improvements seen in a variety of indicators point to some stabilization of the situation.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar told RTÉ’s This Week that while it is “the first days”, the Level 3 restrictions implemented in early October “are starting to take effect.”
“You know that we are seeing the number of cases stabilize and the positivity rate falls. However, it is still the early days, and we have yet to see what the effect of the Level 5 measures is, we really won’t know until November sometime. “
Across Europe, the number of new cases, while still close to record levels, has declined in recent days.
In Ireland, Cavan remains the most affected county, with a 14-day incidence of 981.9 per 100,000 population, followed by Meath, which has an incidence of 652.7.
Mr Varadkar said the government is “increasingly optimistic” that it will be possible to start vaccinating people most at risk for Covid-19 “in the first half, if not the first quarter of next year.”
He said he is confident Ireland can move up to “Level 3 and a Little” in December. “But at the same time, we must not be complacent.”
The government’s strategy is, he said, “to delay the virus to stop it until a vaccine is available.” Varadkar said that it is not inevitable that Ireland will return to Level 5 in the New Year.
Tracking the collapse
Meanwhile, Reid said that a “vast majority” of the nearly 2,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases who were asked to do their own contact tracing last weekend had only reported they had household contacts.
HSE’s contract tracking system collapsed last week due to a surge in cases and a lack of staff to deal with them. As a result, thousands of people who had tested positive for the virus were asked to call their own contacts to avoid a backlog of contact tracing calls.
Reid said the agency had been approaching positive cases over the past week to see how their contact tracing calls ended.
“Specifically in relation to those 2,000 people over the past weekend, we’ve started calling them this weekend, yesterday, and up to this day just to assess how they’ve been making their contacts last week.” Reid told Newstalk’s On The Record. .
“A positive conclusion is the feedback we are receiving. The vast majority of their contacts were from home, so we would immediately expect if someone was a positive case, that household contacts would have been immediately restricted. “
‘It shouldn’t have happened’
Mr. Reid acknowledged that what happened last week “should not have happened to the extent that it happened.”
“It was one of those overwhelming weekends where 3,500 calls had to be made. To put it in context, we went from 8,000 weekly calls to 28,000 weekly calls in a very short period of time and that definitely culminated last weekend, “he said.
“In essence, what was brought up to speed last weekend were absolutely uncontrolled levels in the community.”
He added: “What we’re seeing is calls taking much longer, probably twice the time it took at the beginning of this, more call volume [SIC]and more complex calls that we also have to make. “
Mr. Reid added that he regrets what happened last weekend, adding that the HSE “fixed it.”
“What we did during the summer were four things. First, increase the number of community testing centers and hire workers to do so, second, improve the logistics of transferring those swabs to more efficient tests, third, increase our laboratory capacity to more than 120,000 and build more in the coming weeks and finally recruitment of tracers, ”he said.
Hand sanitizer
When asked about ViraPro hand sanitizers, which have been recalled due to the presence of methanol in the product, Mr. Reid said it was “obviously” a concern.
He said they are in the process of recalling one million hand sanitizers.
“We are sending the recall notice to the entire health system in case they acquire any ViraPro product locally.”
Siptu, the largest union in the state, said it was “shocking” that health care center staff and patients had been using an unsafe hand sanitizer.
It said it wanted “an immediate engagement with the HSE to obtain an explanation of the circumstances” that led to the acquisition and use of the product.
“Our members across the country are very concerned about this shocking development. HSE and other healthcare facilities are risky and dangerous enough for staff and patients facing Covid-19 without there being any health risks associated with using a hand sanitizer product, ”said Siptu Deputy Secretary General John King.
“It is particularly concerning given the importance public health authorities place on effective and regular handwashing as an essential measure to help prevent the spread of the virus.”
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