Dr. Tony Holohan warns that there could be up to 1,000 deaths from Covid-19 in January

Dr. Tony Holohan has warned that there could be up to 1,000 deaths from Covid-19 this month.

The medical director described the grim prediction in a letter to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly on January 14.

The death toll for this month has already reached 485, and the letter highlights infection levels among staff involved in home care.

Dr Holohan wrote: “Given the large number of recently reported outbreaks in residential care facilities and long-term hospitals, we can unfortunately also expect to see a large scale of mortality in these settings.

“Therefore, a total of at least 500-1,000 deaths is expected in January.”

He cautioned that models suggest that deaths in the community will peak at at least 25-30 deaths per day this month. These levels may persist for at least the rest of January.

This does not include deaths related to outbreaks in nursing homes and hospitals.

The country’s top doctor also mentioned the urgency of strengthening efforts to prevent the spread of more infectious forms of coronavirus that come from other countries.

These outbreaks put pressure directly on all health services: “The HSE noted that there are currently approximately 500 licensed home care workers related to COVID-19.”

He added that COVID variants originating from the UK, South Africa and Brazil create a risk of importation of the virus that can emerge in Ireland.

“The data on the number of travelers indicates that between 1 December 2020 and 11 January 2021, more than 190,000 people arrived in Ireland by air, of which 37,000 came from the United Kingdom and almost 70% from the latter flew from airports in south-east England.

“About 12,000 people traveled from the United States and data from the Passenger Locator Form system shows that in the last four or five weeks some 1,400 people came from South Africa and more than 1,600 from Brazil to Ireland in this context.

“NPHET expressed its continued concern about the risks associated with international travel, whether by Irish residents or travelers from other countries to Ireland. It continues to advise against all non-essential international travel.

“While it took note and welcomed the requirement now established in the law, according to which passengers arriving from all countries must present evidence of a negative / undetected RT-PCR test result, taken 72 hours before Upon arrival in Ireland, NPHET felt that further action should be taken.

“A pre-trip test alone is not a robust enough system for disease import prevention and modeling shows that even the best performing tests will lose up to 40 percent of cases.

Regarding the vaccine release, Dr. Holohan said that NPHET cautions that it is important to adhere to the vaccine allocation strategy.

It is vital that groups are vaccinated in order of priority. People at increased risk of severe illness and death should be prioritized during vaccine distribution and administration.

“Vaccinating groups in order of priority will strengthen the legitimacy and public confidence in the vaccination launch. Vaccinating groups out of sequence could have the unfortunate consequence of undermining confidence in the fairness of the process.

“It was recognized that the framework needs to be tailored to the particular set of circumstances pertaining to the timing of vaccine distribution and that there should be ongoing assessment of allocation priorities as new data become available.”