HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE confirmed that a further six people have died with Covid-19 in Ireland. 

It means the number of people in this country with coronavirus who have sadly died now stands at 1,908.

The National Public Health Emergency Team has also said that a further 772 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed, bringing the total number of cases in Ireland to 61,059.

Of the cases notified today;

• 362 are men / 406 are women
• 64% are under 45 years of age
• The median age is 36 years old
• 228 in Dublin, 120 in Cork, 50 in Meath, 41 in Donegal, 41 in Galway and the remaining 292 cases are spread across all remaining counties.

There are currently 325 people in hospital, of which 42 are in ICU. There have been 15 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

Dr Tony Holohan said the overall situation has improved “but we have to remember that these are very early days. This improvement will only be maintained if we keep going in our efforts”.

“We have to remember that incidence is increasing in older age groups, who are particularly vulnerable to this disease. The way in which we can protect them is if we continue to drive down transmission across the whole population.”

Dr Desmond Hickey, Deputy Chief Medical Officer said Ireland has seen a reduction in its 7-day incidence rate of 36% when compared to the previous 7 days.

“Ireland’s progress is notable when compared to the rapidly deteriorating picture across Europe. It is paramount that we sustain and continue to drive down disease incidence as much as possible in the coming weeks,” he added.

Professor Philip Nolan said that the reproduction number is now close to 1.0 nationally.

“This is the first time in a number of weeks that we have been able to report positive indicators of the disease.

“However, our experience to date shows this type of progress is very fragile. We should take these positive signs as an indication our efforts are starting to work, the critical thing now is to keep it up, the virus will seek out any opportunity to spread; over the next weeks let’s make sure we don’t give it that opportunity, by driving R and case numbers as low as possible.”