[ad_1]
DUBLIN (Reuters) – Health officials in Ireland, where a more infectious variant of the coronavirus first discovered in England has been emerging, said on Saturday they believe three cases of another new variant found in South Africa have been contained.
Ireland is dealing with a surge in COVID-19 that surpassed the first wave last year. It confirmed the first cases of the most infectious variant found in South Africa on Friday in people who had traveled to Ireland from South Africa over the Christmas holidays.
Ireland reported this week an increasing presence of the variant that was first found in England. It was detected in 25% of the positive cases that underwent further tests in the week to January 3, compared to 9% two weeks earlier.
“The UK variant concerns us more simply because of the amount of virus that is on the island, and we know it is being transmitted in the community,” Cillian De Gascun, head of Ireland’s national virus laboratory, told the broadcaster. National RTE.
“The good thing about the South African variant is that we know exactly where those cases came from, they have been contained, controlled and traced, and as far as I know, there was no further transmission.”
The government announced its strictest lockdown measures since early last year on Wednesday, warning that a “tsunami” of infections fueled by the UK variant and the easing of sidewalks before Christmas could overwhelm the healthcare system.
The number of patients in Irish hospitals with COVID-19 rose 12% in the space of 24 hours on Saturday to 1,285, having in recent days surpassed the peak of 881 established during the first wave of infections.
Fourteen more patients were admitted to intensive care units (ICU). That brought the total number of people receiving critical care to 119 and left only 27 of the 284 ICU beds in the country’s public hospitals empty.
Those hospitals can safely increase ICU capacity to 375, the head of Ireland’s Health Services Executive (HSE) said this week. The HSE has also reached an agreement to take over ICU beds from private hospitals for COVID-19 admissions.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin)
[ad_2]
