KEEP YOUR DISTANCE!

Warning to Dubliners as half of new cases there

121 of the latest 211 cases were found to be in Dublin

PEOPLE living in Dublin have been given a stern warning to not flout public health guidelines, as the capital accounted for more than half of the Covid-19 cases reported yesterday.

One more person in Ireland has died after contracting Covid-19, as the Department of Health confirmed an additional 211 cases of the virus.

Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn sent another strong warning to people in the county as a further 121 cases were recorded in the capital.

Elsewhere, there were an additional 17 cases in Louth, ten in Limerick, eight in Cork and seven in both Westmeath and Wicklow. Meanwhile, there were six new cases in Laois as Donegal and Galway were hit with five new cases each. The 24 remaining cases were spread across Carlow, Clare, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Meath, Offaly, Roscommon, Tipperary and Waterford.

Dr Glynn last night implored people in Dublin to come forward for Covid-19 tests. He noted, however, that the increasing number of positive cases may be linked to increased testing.

He explained: ‘While we are seeing a continued increase in cases, particularly in Dublin, this is at least partly due to the willingness of people to heed our core messages around knowing the symptoms and coming forward promptly for testing. This, together with all of the other key behaviours, will help to break the chains of transmission in our communities.’

Of those diagnosed with Covid19,

73% were under the age of 45. The National Public Health Emergency Team also confirmed that 28% of the newly confirmed cases were associated with outbreaks or were close contacts of a confirmed case.

Meanwhile, figures confirmed to the Irish Daily Mail show that contact tracers made 6,886 calls to confirmed cases and their close contacts in the last seven days.

The HSE contact tracers are required to make three calls as part of the tracking process.

The first call involves phoning the patient to inform them that they have tested positive for Covid-19.

The second call asks the confirmed case to provide a list of their close contacts.

And the third call involves the HSE ringing the contacts.

As of yesterday, the 100 contact tracers working daily across nine centres carried out 1,124 calls to inform people that they had tested positive for the virus in the previous seven days.

For the same period, 1,096 ‘call twos’ are completed.

And 4,646 people later received phone calls to inform them that they were close contacts of a confirmed case. At present, the time to complete all three calls is one day. On Thursday alone, 1,076 calls were made by the contact tracers. The HSE confirmed to the Mail that 718 of these contacts were ‘call threes’ to close contacts.

This marks a 40.8% weekly increase in the number of contacttracing calls made by the HSE.

Covid-19 testing will be ramped up again today as the Department of Justice and Equality, and the HSE confirmed that widespread testing will be carried out across all direct provision centres.

The move comes following a NPHET recommendation to test residents and staff in all accommodation centres housing asylum seekers and refugees in the State.

Elsewhere, serial testing will continue across nursing homes – residents of which are among the most vulnerable if they contract Covid-19 – as new visitor restrictions are introduced in Dublin from tomorrow. Residents were previously permitted to have four designated visitors. However, due to the spike in cases in the capital this will be reduced to just one. The measures apply for three weeks.