James Cox
One further Covid-19 death and 429 additional deaths have been confirmed in the Republic of Ireland today.
As of midnight Saturday, December 12th, the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) has been notified of 429 confirmed cases of Covid-19. There is now a total of 76,185 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ireland.
There were fewer than five new cases of Covid confirmed in Waterford.
Of the cases notified today, the median age is 34 years old; 122 are in Dublin, 46 in Donegal, 30 in Limerick, 22 in Laois, 20 in Cork and the remaining 189 cases are spread across all other counties.
As of 2pm today, 193 Covid-19 patients are being treated in hospital, of which 31 are in ICU. 13 additional Covid-19 cases have been confirmed in Irish hospitals in the last 24 hours.
Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said: “Today, I am concerned that we are seeing the incidence of Covid-19 rising again. 429 is a large number of cases by the standard of recent weeks and the five-day moving average has now increased above 300 per day.
“Our efforts in Level 5 in recent weeks brought the 14-day incidence rate down to 78 per 100,000 population, put us in a position of having the lowest disease incidence in Europe and ultimately protected many people and saved many lives.
“Take today’s figures as a sign that we all must now reduce our social contacts, limit our interactions with those outside our households, weigh the risks of what socialising we are planning over the next two weeks, so that we can all have as safe a Christmas as possible.”
