DUBLIN (Reuters) – Health officials in Ireland, where a more contagious variant of the coronavirus was first discovered in England, said on Saturday that they believed three cases of a new variant were contained in South Africa.
Ireland is grappling with a COVID-19 boom that surpassed last year’s first wave. This confirms the first cases of the more contagious variant found in South Africa on Friday in people who traveled from South Africa to Ireland during the Christmas holidays.
Ireland reported an increasing prevalence of the variant first found in England this week. It was found in 25% of the positive cases tested further in the week to January 3, compared to only 9% two weeks earlier.
“The British variant is more worrying to us simply because of the amount of virus that is on the island, and we know it is transmitted in the community,” Cillian De Gascun, head of Ireland’s national virus laboratory, told national broadcaster RTE .
“The good thing about the South African variant is that we know exactly where the cases come from, they were contained, controlled and contacted, and to the best of my knowledge there was no further transfer.”
The government on Wednesday announced its toughest closure measures since early last year, warning that a ‘tsunami’ of infections fueled by the British variant and the relaxation of curbs before Christmas could overwhelm the healthcare system.
The number of patients in Irish hospitals with COVID-19 rose by 12% to 245 within 24 hours on Saturday, surpassing the peak of 881 in the last few days during the first wave of infections.
Fourteen more patients were admitted to the intensive care units. This brought the total number of critical care to 119 and left only 27 of the 284 ICU beds in the country’s public hospitals.
The hospitals can safely increase the ICU capacity to 375, the head of the health services manager (HSE) said this week. The HSE has also reached an agreement to take over ICU beds for private hospitals for COVID-19 surveys.
Reporting by Padraic Halpin