HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE confirmed a further 28 deaths of patients diagnosed with Covid-19 and 936 new cases in Ireland.

This brings the total number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Ireland to 17,607, and the total number of deaths to 794.

Widespread testing at nursing homes, where a large number of clusters of infection have broken out, has been ongoing since Saturday. So far, around 18,000 people have been tested as part of this process over the last six days.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan has warned against complacency over the next two weeks, as we approach 5 May when restrictions may be slightly relaxed.

Holohan said that if he were asked to make a decision today whether they should lift restrictions on 5 May, they would be advising against lifting restrictions.

“It will take very little indeed for us to lose the good work we have done. There’s no sense in which we have achieved something here that couldn’t all be undone very quickly.”

Today’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) analysis of 16,439 confirmed Covid-19 cases shows:

56% are female and 43% are male

The median age is 48

2,424 cases have been hospitalised (15%)

331 cases have been admitted to ICU

Holohan said that 319 clusters have been identified in long-term residential care settings, and 191 of these are nursing homes. An outbreak is where one case has occurred, and a cluster is where three or more cases have been confirmed.

Dr Ronan Glynn, Deputy Chief Medical Officer said that “Ireland continues to closely examine mortality so that we can understand it and do everything in our power to prevent it.”

Professor Philip Nolan, chair of NPHET Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, said that the reproduction number, or the R-naught, is somewhere between 0.4 and 0.7.

This means, he said that half of the people who get Covid-19 don’t spread this on to another person, and the other half spread it on to just one other person.

- with reporting from Gráinne Ní Aodha