Big drop in new Covid-19 infections for Longford
Longford has witnessed some little respite today following the recent high numbers of new Covid-19 cases.
The county had five new confirmed cases this Tuesday, January 5, a big drop from the 30 reported yesterday, 55 the day before and 39 the day before that.
It means that in the past six days there have been 166 new cases of the virus detected in Longford.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Longford since the pandemic began is 919 (914 as at Sunday, January 3 plus the 5 announced today by NPHET - see table below).
Longford's 14 day incidence rate of Covid-19 is currently 467.3 per 100,000 population (up slightly from yesterday's rate of 462.4) on the back of 191 cases in the past fortnight. The national incidence rate is 674.4.
Nationally, the new figures are again near record highs.
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 17 additional deaths related to COVID-19. 16 of today's reported deaths occurred in the past few days, in January. There has been a total of 2,282 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.
As of midnight, Monday, January 4, the HPSC has been notified of 5,325 confirmed cases of COVID-19. There is now a total of 113,322 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.
The national incidence for Ireland is now up to 674.4 up from 582.8 per 100,000 yesterday. FULL TABLE AT END OF STORY.
There were 19,869 Covid tests processed in Ireland yesterday and 22.3% of them tested positive.
NPHET highlighted 1,931 in Dublin, 767 in Cork, 323 in Kildare, 322 in Limerick, 238 in Donegal with the remaining 1,744 cases spread across all other counties.
Of the cases notified today 2,550 are men / 2,769 are women and 63% are under 45 years of age. The median age is 36 years old.
As of 2pm today, 840 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 76 are in ICU. There have been 102 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.
Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health says the surge can be turned around quickly.
"We are now experiencing a considerable surge in cases and hospitalisations. We can turn this around quickly if we stick to the measures we know worked last spring.
"We have seen some early progress in that the average number of contacts per case has been dropping in recent days – but we need to continue this effort to limit as much as we can our contact with other people in the days and weeks ahead.
"If we all stay home and keep to the public health advice, we can bring COVID-19 back under control - which ultimately will protect our essential services such as Health and Education and most importantly save lives."
There will be no St Patrick's Day parade in Longford to the second year in a row, it has been announced
BREAKING: Longford's St Patrick's Day parade cancelled as Covid-19 concerns grow