Reporting by James Cox and Aoife Kearns
A further five Covid-19 related deaths occurred in the Republic of Ireland today while the Department of Health has announced 456 additional confirmed cases.
21 of today's cases are in Waterford bringing the total number of cases in the county since Friday, to 103.
The incidence rate in Waterford is now the third-highest in the country at 161.8. while the national 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 people is now at 120.
There has been a total of 1,984 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland along with 68,356 confirmed cases.
Of the cases notified today:
- 199 are men/257 are women.
- 69 per cent are under 45 years of age.
- The median age is 34 years old.
- 105 are in Dublin, 85 in Limerick, 43 in Cork, 38 in Meath, 25 in Clare and the remaining 160 cases are spread across 21 other counties including Waterford.
As of 2pm today, 274 Covid-19 patients are in hospital, of which 33 are in ICU. 10 additional Covid-19 patients have been reported in hospitals in the last 24 hours.
There have been 14 additional deaths and a further 331 new cases of Covid-19 confirmed in Northern Ireland today.
Meanwhile, there was a rare piece of good news in relation to the pandemic earlier as Moderna announced that the vaccine it is developing has a 94.5 per cent protection rate.
“We are going to have a vaccine that can stop Covid-19,” Moderna president Stephen Hoge said in a telephone interview.
Moderna's interim analysis was based on 95 infections among trial participants who received either a placebo or the vaccine. Of those, only five infections occurred in those who received the vaccine, which is administered in two shots 28 days apart.
