Ten more deaths from Covid-19, 426 additional cases

by



[ad_1]

Ten other people with Covid-19 have died in Ireland, bringing the total to 1,506.

The Health Department said 426 more cases of the virus have been confirmed, bringing the total to 23,827.

He said 58 people remain in intensive care.

Tonight’s briefing heard that two other health workers died from Covid-19, bringing the total to seven.

Medical director Dr. Tony Holohan said the 426 cases announced today seemed like a significant increase in recent trends.

However, he said that a large number of the cases were from a hospital, occurred over a period of time and were reported today in a group.

Dr. Holohan said, “There has been a report of a large number of cases that accumulated over a period of time diagnosed with respect to a specific hospital and reported by that hospital’s occupational health department.”

He said the cases involved date back to mid-March.

“They accumulated, we were not aware of them, and it was reported in a group today to add to the number that we would have diagnosed over the course of the day,” he added.

Dr. Holohan said the number seen by health officials is still in line with what would have been anticipated based on the reproductive number and patterns seen in recent days.

Professor Philip Nolan, Chairman of the Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), said: “All indicators of the spread of Covid-19 are declining, including the average number of cases per day , number of people in the hospital and ICU, admissions to ICU and number of deaths reported per day.

“This is reinforced by our estimated number of reproduction, which is currently stable between 0.4 and 0.6.

“We will be monitoring this number and the total number of infections in the population very closely in the coming weeks.”

Dr. Holohan added: “We still want to see progress in the coming days. We need to continue our physical distancing and hygiene measures if we want to continue to suppress the spread of the disease.”

Professor Nolan said that the number of new cases had decreased since mid-April, adding that what we might call the “true” new cases today is still in line with that.

Similarly, for the number of people in the hospital, it said it dropped from around 865 to 680 last week. Today’s number is 459.

The number of people admitted to the hospital per day in mid-April was high, between 50 and 60 people. That dropped to 22 last week and, on average, the number of hospital admissions for the past week has been 17.

The number of people in the ICU due to the virus in mid-April averaged 140, which dropped to 100 last week, and then to 69 on average this week. As of this morning, the number of people in the ICU is 58.

The number of people who entered the ICU per day was between eight and ten in mid-April, and this dropped to an average of three last week and is now between one and two.

The number of deaths in mid-April (on average during the previous five days) was 33, this was 21 last week and there was an average of 13 deaths in the five days until yesterday.

NPHET met today and has given more advice to the government on the possible relaxation of some Covid-19 restrictions next week.

The first of five phases of easing disease control measures will take place on Monday.

Earlier, the Taoiseach told the Dáil that the Government is confident that Phase One can proceed.

Leo Varadkar confirmed that he believes NPHET will make a recommendation advising people to wear “face covers” and not face masks in certain circumstances.

Health Minister Simon Harris said the coronavirus breeding number is between 0.4 and 0.6, which he called a “remarkably stable number.”

He said 12,300 lives could have been lost last week if the infection rate had continued.

Meanwhile, it became known that HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid expressed concern over NPHET’s commitment to increase the number of Covid-19 tests per week to 100,000.

The concern was expressed in a letter to the Secretary General of the Department of Health on Sunday, April 19.

The correspondence has been released following several requests from Labor leader Alan Kelly, who described it as “explosive” in the Dáil this afternoon.

During this afternoon’s daily press conference, Dr. Holohan said there was no tension between NPHET and HSE.

He said there were some challenges as it was a collaborative process and added that it is “a pressurized situation for all of us.”

“It is one where we are working to the rhythm, we are working under pressure and of course tensions arise from time to time,” he said.

Dr. Holohan said that if there were no tension then they might not try hard enough to try to do the job they are trying to do.

Dr. Colm Henry, Clinical Director of HSE, added: “We are completely united in our intention and our strategy to combat this virus. It has been moving very fast.”

He said that there had been some tension around the test strategy, but that they now have a completely united test strategy.

Dr. Henry said, “We are already delivering more than 15,000 tests a day. We will also focus on response times. We are targeting a full 90% end-to-end metric for positive tests within three days.”

Read more:
The latest coronavirus stories
Explained: How long does it take to complete a Covid-19 case now?

The latest data from the Health Protection Surveillance Center, as of midnight on Tuesday and with 23,259 cases, show that 57% are women and 42% are men.

The median age of confirmed cases is 48 years.

The figures show that 3,053 cases (13%) have been hospitalized and, of the hospitalized, 387 cases have been admitted to intensive care units.

There are 7,123 cases associated with health workers.

Dublin has the highest number of cases with 11,308 (49% of all cases) followed by Kildare with 1,348 cases (6%) and Cork with 1,249 cases (5%).

Of those for whom the transmission status is known: community transmission represents 60%, close contact 37%, travel abroad represents 3%.



[ad_2]