A FURTHER 38 people who contracted Covid-19 have died in Ireland, the Department of Health confirmed this evening.

The department has also announced that 657 new cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed here, with 411 more Irish cases from a testing backlog also confirmed by a lab in Germany.

It means that 444 people with Covid-19 have died in Ireland with a total of 12,547 cases confirmed. The median age of today’s reported deaths was 84.

Of those who’ve deaths were announced today, 28 of the 38 people who died were reported as having underlying medical conditions.

Of the 38 people who have died, 29 of those deaths took place in in the east, six were in the west and three were in the south of the country.

Speaking this evening, Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health said that a number of indicators monitored by health officials “are going in a positive direction”.

“it is clear that we need to keep going in our efforts, on an individual level, to limit the spread of this virus,” he added.

As of midnight last night, data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre showed that 2,872 of the confirmed cases related to healthcare workers.

Speaking at this evening’s briefing, the HSE’s integrated care lead Dr Siobhan Ni Bhriain acknowledged the difficulties being faced by all healthcare workers.

“This is a difficult time for families and for staff and we have assistance programs there to help people and we’re very conscious of how hard our staff are working. And I really want to reiterate the message very strongly to them, to look after themselves and if they do that they can look after their patients,” she said.

The cases confirmed from the lab in Germany represent the processing of a backlog of Irish samples, some of which date back to mid-March. The HSE has said it is hoped the backlog would be eliminated this week.