‘Too few cases’ to update data

THE Department of Health has abandoned plans to provide regularly updated figures on the spread of Covid-19 across electoral areas of Ireland, claiming there are now too few cases to publish the details.

In June, the new Covid-19 Data Hub – which allowed members of the public to see cases in each of the country’s electoral areas – was launched amid much fanfare.

At the time, health authorities had promised that it would be updated weekly.

However, the map has not been changed since the first set of data from June 12 was published. The map had given the most detailed look yet of how the disease has spread around Ireland, allowing people to see the rate of infection in their locality.

Researchers from the CSO and NUI Maynooth had been able to pinpoint a locality in Co. Monaghan, with the highest rate of infection in the country.

The Department of Health has now said the number of cases is too low to continue providing the data, claiming it could be used to identify an individual.

They said: ‘There are more than 3,400 electoral districts across the country and they cover small areas of geography. Given that at present, there are a low number of cases notified each day, updating information on a geographic level as small as electoral districts, could potentially identify individuals with Covid-19.’

Asked to explain how such identification could occur based on the data available, the Department of Health did not provide further detail.

The spokeswoman said that in the period from June 22 to July 6, only 141 new cases were notified, which meant that there might well be a single case in an individual electoral area.

For that to be identified, a person would have to had access to the old data and then examine it for comparison with the new data.

That might identify a new case in an electoral area. However, it remains unclear how this could then be used to identify an individual case.

The Department said: ‘Information on the number of cases in each county are kept up to date.

‘Potential solutions to give information on cases in small geographic areas in a nonidentifiable way are being explored currently.’