Health authorities have expressed concern about a continued high number of COVID-19 cases among teenagers and young adults during the recent lockdown.
That’s despite Clare’s incidence rate of the virus now being the lowest in the country.
In the six weeks up until Saturday December 5th last, there had been 1,641 COVID cases across the MidWest – 338 of them were in Clare.
This period largely mirrors the recent lockdown, which saw a significant drop in case numbers.
However, addressing Clare Councillors yesterday, Head of Public Health in the HSE MidWest Dr. Mai Mannix outlined how during this time, almost a quarter of all cases here were among those aged from 15-24.
71% of those people had addresses in Limerick.
She told the meeting that there had been outbreaks associated with colleges and universities, but stressed that this was largely due to students’ socializing rather than strictly occuring within those institutions.
Health officials are continuing to deal with outbreaks in third level settings, and are liaising with student unions, and universities on this issue, while extra testing is being offered to students.
Seperately, Dr. Mannix said the people of Clare have done what she repeatedly called a “remarkable” job in bringing case numbers down here.
There were less than five new cases diagnosed in this county last night, with Clare’s incidence rate now standing at 23.6 per 100,000, which is now the lowest of any county in the country.
