Encouraging figures show Wexford moving in the right direction
THERE were plenty of reasons to be optimistic in the past week as it appears that Co Wexford is continuing to beat Covid-19. Last week’s figures were extremely encouraging as there was only one increase in confirmed cases of the coronavirus throughout the week, while on Friday night Wexford General Hospital was clear of the virus for the first time since it first arrived in the county on March 16.
Wexford began last week with 212 confirmed cases of the virus. There was an increase of five on Thursday to 217 and the county remained on this number until Sunday night.
Of these 217 confirmed cases, quite a few will have already recovered at home. While the Department of Health have not yet made county by county figures in relation to recoveries available, if one applies the latest national recovery rate of 87% to Wexford, it would indicate that there are probably somewhere in the region of 28 active cases of Covid-19 in the county.
At Wexford General Hospital, the positive news continued too. Following last week’s announcement that one of the hospital’s two designated Covid-19 wards had been deemed surplus to requirements and closed, for a 48 hour period the hospital actually recorded zero confirmed cases of the virus. This was the first time since the first case presented at the hospital on March 16.
HSE figures lodged at 8 p.m. on Friday evening showed that there were no confirmed Covid cases on site and this continued into Saturday. However, Sunday night’s figures saw a slight increase to two confirmed cases while there were seven people awaiting test results. One of the suspected cases was in the critical care unit.
Overall, however, massive positives can be taken from Wexford’s performance thus far. Inevitably, we will see some increases and decreases over the coming weeks, however, hopes are high countywide as the model county retains its place at the foot of the table with the second lowest number of Covid-19 cases per head of population.
With restrictions set to open up the distance that people can travel for non essential reasons to 20km from June 8, the public are urged to ensure they maintain social distancing and proper hand hygiene in a bid to prevent any backwards step on the path to defeating Covid-19.