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HSE Director Paul Reid has said that community transmission is a major factor in the number of new cases recently.
Speaking at a UCD briefing this afternoon, Mr. Reid said that “there has been a clear increase in community transmission” of the virus.
He said recent referrals for Covid-19 testing are being driven primarily by school-age children and people living in North Dublin.
Mr. Reid acknowledged that there has been an increase in the number of people with anxiety and mental health problems presenting for HSE services.
He said that while it is concerning, he also said that those people weren’t necessarily anxious about Covid-19.
Speaking about the recent figures, the HSE director said: “There have been 717 new cases in the last 14 days and 151 cases in the last seven days. There are currently six people in ICU at the moment and 50 people in Irish hospitals.”
He said the HSE has been dealing with a number of outbreaks, with the vast majority of them occurring in private homes.
Currently, there are 30 community testing centers across the country, with three emerging centers recently established in Limerick, Tallaght and Kilkenny.
Serial testing
Meanwhile, HSE’s Suzanne O’Connor says there has been an increase in activity at hospitals recently, up 4 percent from last week.
He also gave more details about the serial tests that have been carried out:
“A total of 57,000 tests have been conducted in nursing homes, while 13,000 tests have been completed in meat factories, with a positivity rate of 0.27 percent,” he said.
He also explained how there are Covid and non-Covid pathways established in hospitals to deal with the pandemic. There are currently 363 empty beds in the hospitals at the moment, he said.
Finally, Colm Henry, national clinical advisor and program leader for acute hospitals, said there has been a worrying trend of people needing to be admitted to hospital with the virus.
“We are seeing hospitalization at a rate of two or three a day right now. You cannot cover a virus that spreads among young people. There are very pronounced age-related illnesses.”
However, he reiterated that both in Ireland and in the rest of the world, 90 per cent of deaths have been people over 75 years of age.
He also said that he is concerned about people who have a disease in a delayed stage, due to their concern about Covid-19.
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