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The Health Department reported three more deaths and 248 new coronavirus cases on Saturday.
There have been a total of 75,756 confirmed cases of the virus and 2,123 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Of the cases reported today, 124 are men and 122 are women, 67% are under 45 years of age and the average age is 33 years.
A total of 99 cases occurred in Dublin, 21 in Louth, 16 in Limerick, 15 in Meath, 13 in Cavan and the remaining 83 cases are distributed in another 20 counties.
As of 2 p.m. today, 185 Covid-19 patients are hospitalized, of which 31 are in the ICU with 10 additional hospitalizations in the last 24 hours.
Dr Tony Holohan, Medical Director, said: “Ireland currently has the lowest incidence in Europe and has protected against the significant mortality and serious illness experienced by many European countries as well as the United States.
“Our younger generation led the way, with the incidence in the 19-24 age group reduced from 432 per 100,000 population to 41 per 100,000 population. This is a huge achievement.
“We must all recognize how well our younger generation has reduced its contacts and helped protect the entire population. Now we must all follow this example in the coming weeks.
“We can do this by planning for Christmas from now on to reduce our social contacts and limit our activities to those that are essential and most important to us.”
In the north, nine more people were reported to have died with Covid-19, the Health Department said Saturday. Six of the deaths occurred in the past 24 hours. A total of 476 new infections have been detected.
Earlier, the chairman of Nphet’s modeling advisory group, Professor Philip Nolan, said that Ireland was in a “delicate and fragile position” regarding the level of coronavirus in circulation and that people should “carefully consider the risks” of socialize during Christmas.
Professor Nolan said the country also remains vulnerable due to the high number of people in intensive care and “as the Taoiseach has said, every contact counts now and for the next several weeks.”
Professor Nolan warned against people who think they are safe if they have a negative coronavirus test, particularly those who have come home for Christmas.
He said the risk of a false negative test result was “too high”, and for friends and family it was “a really dangerous position.”
Professor Nolan said that Nphet was asking people to do two things: “Think about how many contacts you really need to have to have a meaningful Christmas and limit that to the lowest number possible, particularly now.
“If we restrict our contacts now for the next 10 to 14 days, it will really significantly reduce the risk of a contact during the central Christmas period leading to infection.”
Second, he said people need to “think about the risks of any given contact, think about the risks of that contact, and do everything possible to reduce the risk.”
When asked about advice people have been given about mixing with three households, he said Saturday with Katie Hannon on RTÉ Radio 1 that the advice was that “there should be no more than three households involved in any event.”
But he said that “we really want to be more conservative than that. Limit your circle to the smallest circle you can. Find them outdoors if you can. If you come across them indoors, keep the number to a minimum. ”
He said people should also “limit the duration” of such contacts. “I mean, let’s not meet for endless hours and hours, at Christmas, longer visits have greater risks. He also said that people should remember to wear masks as much as possible and that windows should be “open a little” for ventilation.
He said the measures were aimed at “giving the vulnerable the gift of life at Christmas.”
“We can see the finish line here. In the spring and summer, the vulnerable in our society will be protected by the vaccine. We appeal to the people, for the remaining months until we have meaningful protection from vaccination, this is the time to postpone some things for beyond Christmas. “
He said that the impact of the opening from December 1 would begin to become evident in the coming days. He said his “fundamental message” was that we are “clearly in a higher risk position” than society in July.
He said the best scenario was that “we would see ourselves in January with the level of disease not much higher than we have now.”
Alternatively, he said: “We could very quickly go back to where we were in mid-October with over 1,000 cases per day and we would be very concerned that many of those cases are older, due to intergenerational mixing over Christmas. “
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