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New variant ‘not likely’ to create tension
A new, more contagious strain of Covid-19 is probably not the reason why cases continue to rise in Ireland, a public health expert said.
Today it has been confirmed that in the Republic of Ireland nine more cases of the new strain of Covid-19 discovered for the first time in Great Britain have been detected.
But Dr Cillian De Gascun, director of UCD’s National Virus Reference Laboratory, has said the data suggests the UK variant was not responsible for the recent “significant and worrying” increase in the number of coronavirus cases here. .
Dr De Gascun wrote on Twitter that further testing this week of Covid samples dating from December 23-29 has detected 9 additional UK variant cases in Ireland.
He added that this brings the total number of cases identified to 16 of the 169 analyzed to date.
“As a random, albeit small, selection of cases primarily from the community, these data would suggest that the UK variant of SARSCoV2, at a ratio of <10%, is not responsible for the recent significant and worrying increase in the number of cases of SARSCoV2 ".
It comes as experts continue to express concern about the pressure facing the public health system as the Covid-19 situation deteriorates.
This week Professor Philip Nolan, Chairman of NPHET’s Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group, gave an insight into the shocking delay Ireland’s testing system is currently experiencing after revealing that more than 9,000 new ones were expected to be confirmed. Covid cases in the coming days.
On Saturday, HSE CEO Paul Reid said 581 patients were in the hospital with Covid-19, an increase from 51 at 8 p.m. Friday night.
Meanwhile, there were 50 people in ICU.
He wrote on Twitter: “We probably haven’t seen the worst impacts yet. But everything we do today to stop the spread of this virus makes a big difference. Please, let’s do our part to protect our health service ”.
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