Less than 5 new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Clare this evening, with 606 confirmed nationally.
A further breakdown of the case number is not provided by NPHET.
Clare’s five day moving average of new cases is now 5, while our fourteen-day incidence rate per 100,000 of 58.9 is the fourth lowest in the country.
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 3 additional deaths related to COVID-19.
Of the deaths reported today, 2 occurred in March and 1 in February.
Dr. Ronan Glynn, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, said: “The vast majority of people are making a huge sacrifice and missing time with loved ones in order for us to stay on course with the public health guidance.
However, we know that in the week ending March 14th, approximately one-in-ten people visited another household for social reasons, with most of these visits involving time spent indoors. While this clearly demonstrates that the vast majority of people are sticking with the public health guidance, it does represent a significant change versus January when just one in 20 people were visiting other homes for social reasons. Please continue to stick with the public heath advice and avoid visiting other homes at this time – do not give this virus the opportunities it is seeking to spread.”
Dr. Lorraine Nolan, Chief Executive Officer, Health Products Regulatory Authority said: “People can be assured about the transparency and honesty of the vaccines monitoring and approvals process. Where there is any indication of concern in relation to side effects of a vaccine, even in a very small number of cases across the EU, we have seen that appropriate steps will be taken to ensure further investigation if needed. There are risks associated with all vaccines but with COVID-19, the benefits of a vaccine far outweighs the risks for a very small number of cases. Rigorous monitoring and safety reporting is ongoing by the HPRA in partnership with our EU partners. We have three safe and effective vaccines, Astra Zeneca, Pfizer and Moderna and we will shortly add the Johnson and Johnson vaccine to increase the roll out of protection against this highly transmissible disease.”
Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, said: “We are experiencing a levelling off in the daily incidence rate of COVID-19 and the concern is that we could so easily move backwards and undo the progress that has been hard-earned since the beginning of the year. The pattern isn’t entirely clear and continues to be volatile, so we’ll be monitoring this quite carefully over the coming weeks. It is important to remember that when the infection gets into a household the transmission rates are very high – up to one third of contacts within a household will subsequently become infected. It is critically important during this very volatile stage that we minimise our contacts where possible and follow public health advice.”
