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The National Public Health Emergency Team will meet today to review the progress made to reduce the incidence of Covid-19, two weeks after the introduction of the Level 5 social and economic restrictions.
Medical Director Dr. Tony Holohan has urged close contacts of confirmed cases to stay home for a full 14-day period.
By doing so, he said, they will be playing their part in the national effort to get the level of the virus to where it needs to be.
New figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Center (HPSC) show that there were 480 new outbreaks in the last week, compared with 680 the previous week.
The largest number of new infections recorded was in private homes, with 320 of these reported, bringing the total to 4,815.
But the number of outbreaks in private homes is shrinking.
The next highest number on record was in schools, where there were 30 new outbreaks, bringing the total to 156.
There were 16 new outbreaks in residential institutions and eight in nursing homes.
The number of new outbreaks in the workplace was 11, two of them in meat, poultry or fish processing plants.
Among vulnerable populations, there were three outbreaks last week in the traveler community, one in a direct provision center and one in a prison, bringing the total number of outbreaks in prisons to seven.
HPSC data covers the week through midnight on October 31.
Yesterday, Health Minister Steven Donnelly revealed that the virus’s reproduction rate or R-number has dropped below one, which means that the virus is being suppressed.
The reproduction rate indicates the number of people on average to whom an infected person will transmit the virus.
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Donnelly said the R number is now between 0.7 and 0.9, implying that the number of daily cases can be expected to continue to drop steadily by an average of around 3% per day.
However, more efforts will be required if the goal of only 50 to 100 cases per day is to be reached by December 2, when the Level 5 restrictions are to end.
Last night, Taoiseach Micheál Martin told his parliamentary party that it is unlikely that the restrictions will be lifted before then.
This is despite a 30% reduction in the 14-day incidence of the disease over the last fortnight and Ireland now has the seventh lowest incidence rate of the disease among 31 European countries.
Only Finland, Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Greece have a 14-day lower incidence of illness than Ireland.
The latest figures show that there were eight Covid-19 related deaths and 444 new cases in Ireland yesterday.
This included 158 cases in Dublin, 48 in Cork and 36 in Limerick.
The 14-day cumulative incidence is now 212.7 per 100,000 people, and the incidence rate in Dublin has dropped by 16.5% since the Level 5 restrictions were introduced.
The largest reductions in disease incidence below Level 5 have occurred in Leitrim (-75%), Cavan (-65%), Westmeath (-63%), Wexford (-59%), Meath (-52%) ), Monaghan (-49%) and Offaly (-47%).
However, the incidence rate of the virus has increased in Waterford, Tipperary and Carlow despite increased restrictions.
Separately, data from the Health Service Executive puts the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the hospital at 298 until last night.
Of these, 40 are in intensive care units.
The hospitals with the highest number of cases are Tallaght, Naas and University Hospital Limerick.
Additional reports Fergal Bowers
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