Nearly half of all Covid-19 cases in Ireland since the pandemic began have been reported in the past two weeks, said Professor Philip Nolan, president of the Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group, on Thursday.
“Just to put into perspective, 71,286 new cases confirmed in 14 days. That means that almost half – 44 percent – of all the Covid cases that we report were reported in the last 14 days. That means one in 67 people in this country were positively reported to Covid in the past 14 days, “Nolan said at a news conference.
Dr Ronan Glynn, deputy medical director of the Irish Department of Health, warned in the briefing that “there will be difficult days and weeks as we report these numbers and, unfortunately, all of this will undoubtedly translate into significant levels of mortality in the coming years. days and weeks ”.
In a statement from the Health Protection Surveillance Center (HPSC) in Ireland on Thursday, Nolan also said that “from an epidemiological point of view, what we are seeing on this wave is different from what we have seen since spring, and perhaps worse”.
“The penetration of the virus in all ages of the population is a matter of great concern,” he added.
When Ireland emerged from a strict six-week block in December, it had one of the lowest levels of Covid-19 cases in Europe. Since then, the situation has changed dramatically. The country recorded the highest infection rate in the world last week, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication based at the University of Oxford.
The seasonality of the virus, the presence of the most transmissible variant in the UK and the families that mix during the holidays contributed to the increase, according to a spokesman for Prime Minister Micheál Martin’s office.
On Thursday, the country’s Health Protection Surveillance Center (HPSC) reported 28 additional COVID-19-related deaths and 3,955 new confirmed cases.
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