HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE confirmed 429 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland.

There have been four further deaths of patients diagnosed with the disease. 

The death toll from the coronavirus in Ireland is now 2,010, and the total number of confirmed cases is now at 69,473.

Of the cases notified today

• 194 are in men and 234 are in women;
• 69% are in people under 45 years of age;
• The median age is 34 years-old;
• 173 are in Dublin, 44 are in Cork, 26 are in Donegal, 22 are in Louth, 21 are in Kildare and the remaining 143 cases are spread across the remaining 20 counties.

Commending on the figures, Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan noted that progress on lowering case numbers across the country has stalled in the last week.

“We now have two weeks to get back on track,” he said.

“Drive down the disease by limiting the number of daily contacts you have. Work from home, stay at home and follow public health advice to get us to a reproduction number below 0.5 by 1 December.”

Chair of NPHET’s modelling advisory group Professor Philip Nolan added that although case numbers had dropped by a rate of 5 -7% per day over the first three weeks of Level 5 restrictions, those numbers had now stopped declining.

“As a consequence the reproduction number has increased to an estimated 0.7- 0.9,” he said.

“The data strongly suggests that a small, recent increase in the level of social contacts has led to the increase in reproduction number we see now.”