Two deaths, 235 new cases
TWO more people have died from the coronavirus, the HSE has confirmed.
A further 235 cases were announced last night, the biggest increase on record, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 1,564.
Both of the deaths were in the east of the county, with one of the deceased having an underlying condition.
So far nine people have died in the Republic from Covid-19.
The latest data from Monday (1,164 cases), reveals that Dublin continues to be the epicentre of the virus in Ireland with 57% of all cases (559), followed by Cork (11%) which has had 133 cases.
Some 39 patients are currently in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and 305 cases have been hospitalised.
Social distancing measures appear to be paying a dividend with the number of people in contact with each new infected person shrinking from 20 to five.
Speaking at the nightly briefing, the chief medical officer at the Department of Health, Dr Tony Holohan, said: ‘The reduction in the number of contacts that we’ve seen for each of the individual cases, that the contact-tracing teams are finding, is reduced significantly over the period that the social distancing measures have been in place. That tells us that the population is responding well to the measures.’
However, Dr Holohan said it was too early to tell if the measures had an impact on the number of cases in the country.
The methodology for deciding who is tested has now changed to only include people who have two or more symptoms. Dr Holohan said the shift was necessary to focus on those more likely to have the virus.
‘Our view is that many more people that are ever likely to have this particular disease, have been seeking testing, well beyond a level that was either necessary feasible or sustainable in terms of a testing strategy,’ he said.
Dr Holohan said that people didn’t need a positive test result in order to follow self-isolation guidelines and that it was important that the public knew to self-isolate if they were showing symptoms.
Deputy chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn said the focus of testing had now changed to prioritise ‘those who are vulnerable and those who are at the highest risk to exposure.’
Dr Glynn said the new strategy was to throw resources at the right people, as just 6% of tests yielded positive results.
He said that the target is to reach 15,000 tests per day. Procuring Personal Protective Equipment has been a major issue for the health service.
Dr Glynn said that the country faced ‘huge challenges’ in procuring PPE for healthcare workers but that millions of protective items would arrive from Sunday onwards in ‘50 to 60 plane loads’.