Nearly half of the total Covid-19 cases in Ireland since the start of the pandemic have been reported in the past two weeks, Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of the Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group, said Thursday.
“To put it in perspective, 71,286 new cases confirmed in 14 days. That means nearly half – 44 percent – of all Covid cases we’ve ever reported were reported in the past 14 days. 67 people in this country. have been positively notified of Covid in the past 14 days, ”Nolan told a briefing.
Dr. Ronan Glynn, deputy chief medical officer for the Irish Department of Health, warned during the briefing that “there will be difficult days and weeks ahead as we report these numbers and that unfortunately this will no doubt translate into significant levels of mortality in days and weeks to come ”.
In a statement from Ireland’s Health Protection Surveillance Center (HPSC) on Thursday, Nolan also said that “from an epidemiological perspective, what we’re seeing in this wave is different from what we’ve seen since the spring, and perhaps worse.”
“The penetration of the virus by all ages of the population is a special cause for serious concern,” he added.
When Ireland came out of a strict six-week lockdown in December, it had one of the lowest levels of Covid-19 cases in Europe. Since then, the situation has unraveled dramatically. The country recorded the highest contamination rate in the world last week, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication based out of the University of Oxford.
The seasonality of the virus, the presence of the more transmissible British variant and the mixing of households during the holiday season all contributed to the rise, a spokesman for Prime Minister Micheál Martin’s office said.
On Thursday, the country’s Health Protection Surveillance Center (HPSC) reported 28 additional deaths related to COVID-19 and 3,955 new confirmed cases.
Read more about this story:
