Covid-19 Saturday: 55 deaths, 827 new cases

THE Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 55 additional deaths related to Covid-19.

36 of these deaths occurred in February, 18 of these in occurred in January, and the date of 1 death remains under investigation.

The median age of those who died is 86 years and the age range is 49-100 years.

There has been a total of 3,674 Covid-19-related deaths in Ireland.

As of midnight, Friday 5th February, the HPSC has been notified of 827 confirmed cases of Covid-19. There is now a total of 202,548* confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

Of the cases notified today:

• 409 are men / 416 are women
• 63% are under 45 years of age
• The median age is 38 years old
• 297 are in Dublin, 76 in Cork, 56 in Galway, 46 in Wexford, 37 in Kildare and the remaining 315 cases are spread across all other counties. **

As of 2pm today, 1,177 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 177 are in ICU. There were 29 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer, Department of Health said: ‘There are a few old habits that collectively we have to break in order to suppress Covid-19 together. We know that people who feel unwell typically avoid calling their GP over the weekend, and wait to see if they improve. You should no longer do that – you must phone your GP at the first sign of anything like Covid-19 symptoms. Do not adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach.’

‘Similarly, do not leave your house or go to work if you have any cold or flu like symptoms at all. Breaking these habits will limit Covid-19’s opportunity to spread from person to person.’

The COVID-19 Dashboard provides up-to-date information on the key indicators of Covid-19 in the community.

*Validation of data at the HPSC has resulted in the denotification of 42 confirmed cases. The figure of 202,548 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 05 February 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 da

~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.

fluctuations in case numbers.

• 7 day incidence is 155.0
• 5-day moving average is 1,015