Nearly half of Ireland’s cases have been reported in the last two weeks since the start of the pandemic, Professor Philip Nolan, chair of the Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group, said on Thursday.
“To put it in perspective, 71,286 new cases were confirmed within 14 days. That means almost half – 44 percent – of all the Covid cases we’ve ever reported have been reported in the last 14 days. That means that one in 67 people in this country has been positively notified Covid in the past 14 days, ‘Nolan said at a briefing.
Dr. Ronan Glynn, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Department of Health in Ireland, warned during the briefing that “there are difficult days and weeks ahead if we report these numbers, and all of this will undoubtedly have a significant degree of mortality in the days and weeks to come” .
In a statement from the Irish Health Protection Center (HPSC) on Thursday, Nolan also said that “what we see in this wave from an epidemiological perspective is different from what we have seen since the spring, and perhaps worse”.
“The penetration of the virus at all ages of the population is a particular cause for concern,” he added.
When Ireland emerged from a strict six-week exclusion in December, it was one of the lowest levels of Covid-19 cases in Europe. Since then, the situation has unraveled dramatically. The country recorded the highest infection rate in the world last week, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication based at the University of Oxford.
According to a spokesman for Prime Minister Michael, the virus’ seasonality, the presence of the more transmissible British variant and households mixed during the holidays contributed to the boom.
The country’s Health Protection Center (HPSC) on Thursday reported 28 additional deaths related to COVID-19 and 3,955 newly confirmed cases.
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