Covid-19 Wednesday: 25 deaths, 566 new cases

THE Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 25 additional deaths related to Covid-19.

Of these deaths, 5 occurred in March,13 occurred in February and 6 in occurred January or earlier*.

There has been a total of 4,357** Covid-related deaths in Ireland.

As of midnight, Tuesday 2^nd March, the HPSC has been notified of 566 confirmed cases. There have now been a total of 221,189*** confirmed cases in Ireland.

Of the cases notified today:

• 280 are men / 284 are female
• 68% are under 45 years of age
• The median age is 34 years old
• 233 in Dublin, 37 in Kildare, 30 in Meath, 25 in Donegal, 24 in Westmeath and the remaining 217 cases are spread across all other counties****.

As of 8am today, 489 patients are hospitalised, of which 114 are in ICU. There were 29 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

As of 28^th February, 439,782 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Ireland:

• 297,899 people have received their first dose
• 141,883 people have received their second dose

The COVID-19 Dashboard provides up-to-date information on the key indicators of Covid in the community including daily data on Ireland’s vaccination programme.

Dr Ronan Glynn, deputy chief medical officer, Department of Health said: ‘Through the hard work and sacrifice of the vast majority of people, key disease indicators continue on a positive trajectory. However, we are still seeing outbreaks in the community, including those linked to extended families, workplaces and funerals. We need to keep up our guard against the B117 variant of Covid-19, which we know is dominant in Ireland at present and highly transmissible.

‘Our willingness to stick with the public health advice in our daily routine has brought us the progress that we can see today. Together, through staying at home as much as possible, social distancing, hand washing and wearing face coverings, we can continue to drive down the spread of Covid-19.’

*There is one death where the date of death is under investigation.

**Validation of data at the HPSC has resulted in the denotification of 1 death. The figure of 4,357 reflects this.

***Validation of data at the HPSC has resulted in the denotification of 7 confirmed cases. The figure of 221,189 confirmed cases reflects this.

****County data should be considered provisional as the national Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting System (CIDR) is a dynamic system and case details are continually being validated and updated.

Today’s cases, 5-day moving average of new cases, 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 population and new cases in last 14 days (as of midnight 02 March 2021) (incidence rate based on Census 2016 county population)

~The 5-day moving average of the number of new cases provides an appropriate indicator of current daily case numbers within a county. It takes account of any validation of cases for previous days and smooths out daily/weekend fluctuations in case numbers.

• 7-day incidence 91.2
• 5-day moving average 591