The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has this Friday, January 1st, 2021, been notified of 11 additional deaths related to COVID-19.
There has been a total of 2,248 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.
As of midnight, Thursday, December 31st, the HPSC has been notified of 1,754 confirmed cases of COVID-19. There is now a total of 93,532 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.
Of the cases notified today:
- 846 are men / 900 are women
- 64% are under 45 years of age
- The median age is 35 years old
- 523 in Dublin, 296 in Cork, 180 in Galway, 104 in Mayo, 94 in Kerry and the remaining 557 cases are spread across all other counties.
As of 2pm today, 504 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 47 are in ICU. 46 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.
Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health said: “The most concerning trend at present is the rapidly increasing number of people being admitted to hospital - we are now admitting between 50 and 70 people a day to our hospital system. Unfortunately, we expect this to get worse before it gets better. Our health system will not continue to cope with this level of impact.
"We have also seen a significant increase in positive laboratory tests in recent days reflecting a true increase in the incidence of the disease as well as the delay in people coming forward for testing over the Christmas period. As our systems catch up with these effects it places significant pressure on our reporting system.
We have always understood that numbers of positive tests or confirmed cases would be a less reliable indicator over the Christmas period. This is typical of infectious disease reporting annually over the two weeks of Christmas and New Year.
What is clear are the measures that the Government has now mandated and the behaviours that we as individuals need to observe. Everyone needs to stay at home other than for essential work or care.”
Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, said: “Tests processed and reported on a given day will normally be validated and confirmed by the HPSC the following day. Positive tests detected in laboratories require validation (to remove duplicates and other tests that do not create new cases) and transfer to the HPSC database before confirmation and reporting.
"A very large volume of positive tests in recent days means there is a delay in formal reporting. In excess of 9,000 additional new cases will be reported over the coming days. The reporting delay does not affect case management or contact tracing or our overall monitoring and modelling of the pandemic.”
The COVID-19 Dashboard provides up-to-date information on the key indicators of COVID-19 in the community.
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Today’s cases, 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 population and new cases in last 14 days (as of midnight 31 December 2020) (incidence rate based on Census 2016 county population)
| County | Today's cases (to midnight 31Dec2020) | 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 population (18Dec2020 to 31Dec2020) | New Cases during last 14 days (18Dec2020 to 31Dec2020) |
| Ireland | 1,754 | 321.3 | 15,302 |
| Monaghan | 26 | 581.6 | 357 |
| Donegal | 44 | 552.2 | 879 |
| Louth | 46 | 528.4 | 681 |
| Limerick | 53 | 506.4 | 987 |
| Wexford | 30 | 370.7 | 555 |
| Cavan | 23 | 364.9 | 278 |
| Dublin | 523 | 358.9 | 4,836 |
| Kilkenny | 25 | 351.7 | 349 |
| Kerry | 94 | 331.1 | 489 |
| Mayo | 104 | 328.7 | 429 |
| Sligo | 10 | 309.8 | 203 |
| Cork | 296 | 289.9 | 1,574 |
| Meath | 26 | 284.6 | 555 |
| Galway | 180 | 281.3 | 726 |
| Laois | 12 | 271.6 | 230 |
| Carlow | 7 | 268.7 | 153 |
| Clare | 19 | 234 | 278 |
| Roscommon | 63 | 223.1 | 144 |
| Kildare | 56 | 222.5 | 495 |
| Westmeath | 23 | 209.5 | 186 |
| Waterford | 5 | 203.1 | 236 |
| Longford | 19 | 168.8 | 69 |
| Offaly | 25 | 161.6 | 126 |
| Wicklow | 15 | 154.5 | 220 |
| Leitrim | 10 | 143.6 | 46 |
| Tipperary | 20 | 138.5 | 221 |
The following table has been included to show both positive tests and confirmed cases in the latest 14-day period. Normally, the number of confirmed cases reported on a given day correlates with the number of positive tests the preceding day, allowing for validation and removal of duplicates.
Once the delays that have arisen in recent days have been resolved, we will no longer report the laboratory test results.
Reporting over latest 14-day period (19/12/2020-01/01/2021)
| Date reported | Reported Confirmed cases | Tests processed | Positive tests detected | Positivity rate |
| 18/12/2020 | - | 13941 | 703 | 5.0% |
| 19/12/2020 | 527 | 13458 | 746 | 5.5% |
| 20/12/2020 | 760 | 12804 | 757 | 5.9% |
| 21/12/2020 | 726 | 13216 | 698 | 5.3% |
| 22/12/2020 | 968 | 20660 | 1077 | 5.2% |
| 23/12/2020 | 939 | 22884 | 1269 | 5.5% |
| 24/12/2020 | 922 | 21416 | 1643 | 7.7% |
| 25/12/2020 | 1019 | 11999 | 1207 | 10.1% |
| 26/12/2020 | 1293 | 3536 | 343 | 9.7% |
| 27/12/2020 | 744 | 9405 | 1178 | 12.5% |
| 28/12/2020 | 764 | 13805 | 2007 | 14.5% |
| 29/12/2020 | 1546 | 17484 | 2867 | 16.4% |
| 30/12/2020 | 1720 | 26277 | 4366 | 16.6% |
| 31/12/2020 | 1620 | 26866 | 5573 | 20.7% |
| 01/01/2021 | 1754 | - | - | - |
The seven-day incidence is 198.3.
The five-day moving average is 1,481.
- To watch or listen to the Southern Star Coronavirus Podcast, please search ‘Coronavirus Podcast’ at the top right of this page or see the Southern Star on YouTube. This week’s podcast is a books special, called The Best Book I Read This Year. Presented by Star journalists Emma Connolly and Siobhán Cronin, guests sharing their book choices include Brian O’Donovan and Jacqui Hurley from RTÉ, film producer David Puttnam, authors Carol Drinkwater and Bibi Baskin, TD Michael Collins, former TD Jim Daly, and many more. And this week's music is a lovely tribute song to singer Kirsty MacColl, whose anniversary takes place at this time of year.
- You can subscribe to the Southern Star Coronavirus podcast which is available, in audio and video versions, on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.
