Three additional deaths, 1,066 new cases

by



[ad_1]

The Health Department has reported 1,066 more cases of Covid-19 today, bringing the total to 54,476.

Three people who were diagnosed with the virus have died. The number of deaths related to the coronavirus is now 1,871.

As of 2:00 p.m. today, the number of people receiving treatment in intensive care units is 37, three more than yesterday. There are 313 Covid-19 patients in hospitals. Yesterday there were 314 people in hospitals with the virus.

The 14-day national incidence rate exceeded 300 per 100,000 population for the first time. The rate is now 302 per 100,000 residents.

Cavan still has the highest infection rate per 100,000 residents at 1,055.5.

The five-day moving average is 1,160 boxes per day.

Dublin accounts for 244 of the cases announced today, 104 of the cases were detected in Galway, 98 in Cork, 92 in Meath, and the remaining 528 cases were spread across the remaining counties.

Of the cases reported in the last 14 days, the mean age was 31 years, and 69% of the cases were under 45 years of age. In the last seven days, 116,640 tests have been carried out with a positivity rate of 6.9%.

There has been an average of more than 16,000 Covid-19 tests performed per day in the last week.

The chairman of the Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group of the National Public Health Emergency Team, Professor Philip Nolan, said that a reduction of 100 cases per day over the next month would prevent 120 hospitalizations, 15 ICU admissions and 20 deaths.

“Every effort we make over the next six weeks saves hospitalizations and saves lives, both in the community at large and in nursing homes.”

He said that for every 1,000 cases, it was expected that, in the group under 45, 12 of the 1,000 would be admitted to the hospital and one to the ICU.

Death from Covid-19 in this age group was very rare, possibly one in 5,000 or 7,000.

The risk of mortality increases considerably with age. Professor Nolan said that in the age group 45 to 65, 50 would be expected to be admitted to the hospital, 10 to the ICU and three deaths.

In the group over 65 years, almost 20% of them would be admitted to the hospital, 30 to the ICU with 30 deaths.

When asked if it was a realistic goal to reduce the ‘R’ number substantially below 1 after six weeks of Level 5, Professor Nolan said it was an “absolutely realistic and essential” goal. He said that’s what we have to do.

He said we had done it before and asked everyone to rethink how they were behaving towards the end of April and into May.

He said that everyone who kept their distance, very cautious with hand hygiene and limited contacts.

He said that it is absolutely doable if we look at those basic measures. He said that if we stay home and are exceptionally careful when we have to leave home, we will reach that goal – we will be in a hundred cases a day or less in early December and then we will be in a completely different position.

Deputy Medical Director Dr. Heather Burns said 14,404 cases were reported in the past 14 days.

He said 649 new outbreaks of the virus were reported in the week through October 17 with 461 or 71% in private homes.

Dr. Burns said there are six additional outbreaks in nursing homes and community hospitals, adding that there are now 33 open outbreaks in these settings with a total of 451 cases.

She said they continue to see an increase in mortality. In the first three weeks of October there were 60 deaths in confirmed and probable Covid cases, of which 24 are linked to outbreaks in nursing homes.

There were an average of 23 people admitted to the hospital each day.

Professor Nolan said that the number of tests performed each day continues to increase and with that there has been an increase in the number of positive tests.

He said positivity rates in July were less than 1% compared to an average positivity of 7.1% this week. However, yesterday’s rate dropped to 5.8%, which is an indicator that things may start to stabilize.

He said the incidence rate for people ages 19 to 24 is 400 per 100,000 and the incidence rate for people 65 and older has doubled or tripled in recent days.

Professor Nolan said that the reproduction rate is estimated to be around 1.3 and 1.4.

Medical Director Dr. Tony Holohan reminded people to adhere to public health guidelines.

He said we have to go back to the way we did things in the spring.

Dr Holohan said it was important to say again that anyone who has been diagnosed with Covid-19 or is having symptoms or is waiting for a test or result should isolate themselves.

He said that didn’t just mean staying home, but staying in his room. He added that if you live with someone in that situation you should also stay home.

Dr. Holohan repeated that people’s individual behavior, such as washing hands, wearing masks, and limiting social contacts by taking steps such as working from home when possible, is the best and first line of defense against Covid.

He said the public health system is the next defense mechanism with its ability to detect diseases and prevent them from getting out of control and becoming widespread.

He said the system is being challenged by the scale of the disease as it is happening right now.

We need your consent to upload this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage additional content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Review your data and accept it to load the content.Manage preferences

Dr. Holohan said that “we can’t keep contacting traces of large loads of infection and think that if we can contact traces of all of that, we can somehow tolerate a large load of infections that is producing a lot of preventable hospitalizations. , preventable ill health “.

He said that as long as there is high transmission in the community, it will be impossible to protect nursing homes despite all the measures that are being taken.

He warned that if people were to behave like they used to around this time last year, “we think this virus would spread through the population with a reproductive number of 4 or 5, maybe up to 6, which is a colossal number.” “.

Regarding schools, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Heather Burns said the situation here continues to reflect the international experience that schools are a safe environment.

She said the positivity rate among close contacts in schools is 2.8% compared to 13% in the community.



[ad_2]