Dr Cillian De Gascun at the nightly briefing in the Department of Health.

Dr Cillian De Gascun at the nightly briefing in the Department of Health.

MORE THAN 9,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in Ireland have now recovered, official figures indicate.

Statistics from the Department of Health show that 8,377 people have recovered in the community while 856 of those in hospital have also recovered.

The figures, which are the most up to date available, are based on an analysis of the confirmed cases when the overall total stood at 15,186 on Saturday.

The number of confirmed infections had risen to 16,040 yesterday, with 388 new cases confirmed in the previous 24 hours.

Yesterday marked the first time the department outlined statistics in relation to recoveries.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said the figures were broadly in line with recovery rates in other countries.

“It’s giving us a picture which is probably similar to what our understanding, our expectation, might have been,” he said.

Dr Cillian De Gascun, the chairman of the Covid-19 expert advisory group, said as of midnight on Monday, 111,584 tests for coronavirus had been carried out.

He said 20,822 tests were carried out in the previous seven days. Of those, 4,025 were positive (19%).

He said the current turnaround time for results was 24 to 36 hours. He added that capacity for testing stood at 10,000 a day but the number of referrals for testing was only between 1,300 to 1,500 per day.

He said the excess capacity would be deployed to manage a planned upturn in testing in community residential settings.

“It doesn’t surprise us in terms of what we might have expected, and some of the figures that we would have had all along about our hospitalisation rates, our admission rates into intensive care, would be suggesting that we’re having an experience of the disease which is consistent with the international picture.”