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Updated 53 minutes ago
THE NUMBER OF people with Covid-19 in Irish hospitals has dropped slightly to 308.
According to the latest HSE data, there are 308 people being treated for Covid-19 at the hospital, at 8pm last night. On Monday, 359 people were being treated for Covid-19 at the hospital.
At 8pm last night, there are also 75 people with Covid-19 in intensive care units.
Health officials confirmed 606 new cases of Covid-19 and three deaths last night.
Daily case numbers have become static or have started to increase slightly, according to Professor Philip Nolan, chair of the Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group of Ireland.
Nolan said last night that current decline rates are between 0% and 2% per day, which would lead to doubling in about 35 days or more.
The reproduction number is also uncertain, but it is estimated between 1 and 1.3.
Nolan highlighted some reasons that are potentially behind the stasis in the number of cases, including an increase in attendance at workplaces in late February, before falling around the St. Patrick’s Day bank holiday and then increasing again.
“There is a clear association between the level of attendance in the workplace and whether schools are open or closed,” Nolan said, referring to the fact that attendance at workplaces decreased during the midterm holidays.
When asked what people can do to further reduce lowercase numbers, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ronan Glynn highlighted the progress that has been made, including reducing incidence rates in the age cohorts of 18 to 24 and over 65 years.
“We know that the vast majority of people are doing their best. We know, for example, that 90% of people, nine out of 10 people, do not visit other homes, ”Glynn said.
“That is phenomenal. It’s a huge request for people who continue to do it for such a long period of time, but continue to do so. “
The latest figures come as the government considers easing restrictions ahead of an announcement Tuesday.
The situation remains “volatile,” according to NPHET, but Dr. Glynn stressed that the country will begin to return to a level of normalcy as the level of vaccination increases in the younger age cohorts.
It used so much the impact of vaccination on the prevalence of Covid-19 in nursing homes, that it has dropped dramatically.
“Brighter days are ahead,” he said, adding that people should continue to follow the guidelines.
“It will bring us back to a level of normalcy, that, that we really haven’t experienced since, since 2019 effectively.”
The deputy CMO was also asked if those who had been fully vaccinated could meet indoors, or without social distancing or wearing masks.
He said that while NPHET was hoping to issue an updated advice over the next week, current public health guidelines still apply to those who have been vaccinated.
“People have to assume that they are not protected and that they have no protection until two weeks after receiving their second dose of vaccine,” he said.
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“For most people in the community, we are a good number of weeks away from that scenario.”
Meanwhile, 1,400 people accessed the five new Covid-19 testing centers “without an appointment, no need for an appointment.”
The temporary testing centers will allow people who don’t have Covid-19 symptoms to get a free trial without having to contact their GP first.
The HSE is opening walk-in care centers in areas where the number of positive cases is particularly high.
As of Monday, 690,449 vaccines had been administered in Ireland: 503,796 were first doses with 186,653 people fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
A total of 855,360 doses had been delivered to Ireland as of Friday March 19.
Another 244,000 doses should be delivered by March 31 if Ireland is to meet its 1.1 million first-quarter target.
HSE CEO Paul Reid has confirmed that he expects AstraZeneca to deliver more than 100,000 doses next week, in addition to Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Reid said that people should expect vaccines to be implemented in more and more GP practices as implementation increases.
“This is in large part because we increase our resources. We have nearly 11,000 people now trained and fully trained vaccinators, but the way we will mobilize our [vaccination] centers to deliver at those volumes are … we will use the combination of our own qualified staff, experienced vaccinators [and] significant recruitment for our campaign that we have been running. There are about 4,000 applications nationally and locally, ”Reid said.
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