Concern about the Covid-19 rate in Dublin with 321 cases in the capital confirmed today

The chief medical officer has said he is concerned about the level of Covid-19 infection in the capital, with 321 new cases reported in Dublin tonight.

Tonight, Dr. Tony Holohan reported 767 new cases of the disease across the country and confirmed that two more patients diagnosed with Covid-19 have died. In total, there were 103 deaths related to Covid-19 in the month of October.

Dr. Holohan said there is evidence that the restrictions are beginning to have an impact on the spread of the virus nationwide. However, he added that there is still “a long way to go.”

In particular, he said, a source of concern is the situation in Dublin, where he said health officials “have not seen the decline in the way that we have seen in the rest of the country, in the way that we would like to see. “.

He said there has been a big reduction in the seven-day moving average in the rest of the country. In Dublin, however, there have been an average of 200 cases reported each day for the last week.

“That increases a bit, in one day over the weekend we had less than 100 cases in Dublin, but today we are reporting a figure of more than 300 cases in Dublin,” said Dr. Holohan.

“We would like that to drop. And this is a pattern that we have seen in other jurisdictions, Dublin is a large city with a concentrated population, which reflects some of the patterns of this particular disease. “

The 14-day incidence rate in Dublin is now 227.2 per 100,000, with more than 3,000 cases reported in the county in the last two weeks.

Dr Holohan said the Level 3 restrictions in Dublin “had no appreciable effect in terms of slowing down the infection” in the way that health officials would have liked.

We’d like to think that over the course of the rest of this week we could start to see a more complete effect of all of phase five, not just the anticipatory behavior we’ve seen in the population, but all the measures that were mandatory. by the government having full effect.

He said that over the next week, new cases will be those that could only have arisen through infection after the time those measures were introduced and this will provide an indication of how well those restrictions are working.