HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE confirmed a further 295 cases of the Covid-19 virus in Ireland and another 8 people have died.

The median age of today’s reported deaths is 86, and six of those eight patients were reported as having underlying health conditions.

Six of the patients who died were located in the east, one was in the south and one was in the west of the country. The patients included five females and three males.

There have now been 54 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland; the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Ireland now stands at 2,910.

Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan said that “we are beginning to see encouraging signs in our efforts to flatten the curve. However, we cannot become complacent.”

In Northern Ireland, there was one additional death and 123 new cases confirmed, bringing the Covid-19 death toll there to 22 and the number of confirmed cases to 533.

An overview of the cases in Ireland

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has done an overview of the cases so far. As of midnight on Saturday, its analysis reveals:

50% are male and 49% are female, with 111 clusters involving 428 cases

The median age of confirmed cases is 47 years

645 cases (26%) have been hospitalised

Of those hospitalised, 84 cases have been admitted to ICU

578 cases (23%) are associated with healthcare workers

Dublin has the highest number of cases at 1,393 (56% of all cases) followed by Cork with 217 cases (9%)

Of those for whom transmission status is known: community transmission accounts for 50%, close contact accounts for 27%, travel abroad accounts for 23%.

Health Minister Simon Harris today met with the nursing home sector to discuss how to prevent further clusters of infection in these care settings. He said he expects new measures this week to address the situation.

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Harris told radio station FM104 today he is unsure when the restrictions will remain in place until but hopes some progress is made by Easter Sunday.

“Will the measure be extended beyond Easter Sunday? I’ve got to be truthful, I don’t know. I think these measures are so restrictive and significant that you cannot leave them in place for a very long time.

“The judgement call our doctors had to make was, what is the right time to bring these measures in? So what we’re planning to do is going intensively at this now for a couple of weeks so that when we get to Easter Sunday we can see some progress,” he said.

- with reporting from Cónal Thomas, at the Department of Health