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The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) has reported six more deaths related to Covid-19.
The latest deaths bring to 1,902 the total number of people known to have died from the disease in Ireland to date.
Nphet also announced an additional 866 confirmed cases as of midnight Wednesday, bringing the overall total to 60,297 since the outbreak began.
The mean age of the last confirmed cases is 35 years, and the cases are divided almost evenly between men (428) and women (438).
242 cases were confirmed in Dublin, 166 in Cork, 56 in Donegal, 54 in Galway, 44 in Meath and the remaining 304 cases are distributed in another 20 counties.
Meanwhile, five nursing homes are receiving “intensive” support from the state as they fight the “red” coronavirus outbreaks, compared to just one facility in that situation two weeks ago.
Another 20 to 25 nursing homes are dealing with “amber” outbreaks and are receiving support from the Health Services Executive (HSE), Chief Executive Paul Reid said in a briefing Thursday.
The HSE classifies the level of support needed in residential care facilities with Covid-19 outbreaks as red, amber, or green.
“Those in the red would be under a wide range of intense support and under very close surveillance,” Reid said.
Dr. Liam Woods, National Director of Acute Hospitals, said that most of the residential care facilities in the country “are managing well” during the second wave of Covid-19.
There were 958 nursing homes that currently did not require support and another 125 facilities that received some support from HSE, but were managing the outbreak themselves.
“There is a small number that is in red, which means we have staff in those facilities right now, and we are providing intensive support around infection prevention and control,” said Dr. Woods.
There were 330 coronavirus patients in acute care hospitals and 42 in intensive care as of Thursday morning, Reid said.
In the fortnight until Monday, 19 people had been admitted to intensive care. This included one person in the 0-10 year old cohort, six in the 35-64 year old group, and 12 people 65 and older.
Pressure on hospitals
However, the health chief warned that the health system still anticipated a lag between the high number of cases in recent weeks and the pressure on hospitals.
“We may not have fully seen the delay effect of the cases that have come up in recent weeks,” Reid said.
HSE Clinical Director Dr Colm Henry said the strong spikes in cases across Europe demonstrated that “we are only two weeks away from overwhelmed healthcare systems.”
Hospitals had not yet had to rely on their “scalability” in intensive care, as was required during the first wave of Covid-19 in the spring, he said.
There were some positive signs about the impact of the national shutdown, and the previous restrictions were “beginning to take effect,” he said.
Incidence, which is the rate of spread of the disease, was “starting to decline” among most age groups, he said. The only cohort where the spread of the virus was increasing was among the older age groups, Dr. Henry said.
The high number of cases seen in previous weeks among younger people was now “rapidly” finding its way into more vulnerable older demographics, he said.
Dr. Abigail Collins, HSE’s public health consultant, reiterated that schools were not “incubators” for Covid-19.
There were 70 schools where public health teams believed the virus had spread within educational facilities. In these cases, the average number of additional infections was three people, Dr. Collins said. The schools had a “much lower level of forward spread” than other congregated facilities, such as nursing homes.
Dr. Collins also said that in a quarter of the cases in which a student or staff member contracted the virus, public health teams had not contacted the school.
“Not everyone who has a confirmed case of Covid-19 has been inside the educational center within their infectious time period, and if that is the case, then we do not need to do a public health risk assessment,” said.
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