Covid cases continue to fall but 93 more deaths reported

Ninety-three more deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) this evening.

Of the deaths reported today, 89 occurred in January and three in December.

The median age of those who died was 82 years and the age range was 41-99 years. There are no newly reported deaths in healthcare workers. There are no newly reported deaths in a young person under the age of 30.

There has been a total of 2,708 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.

The HPSC has also been notified of 2,001 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, 19 of which were in County Cavan.

In the 14 days to midnight on Monday, January 18, there were 974 new cases of the virus in County Cavan, translating to an incident rate of 1278.6 per 100,000 people. It is below the national average of 1334.6/100K.

Although there were less than five new cases reported in County Monaghan in this evening's figures, the Farney county still has the highest rate nationally over the past fortnight at 2564. 1 cases per 100,000 of population.

There have now been a total of 176,839 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

Of the cases notified today:

- 892 are men / 1,098 are women

- 55% are under 45 years of age

- The median age is 42 years old

Of today's cases 701 were in Dublin, 204 in Cork, 102 in Waterford, 98 in Meath, 90 in Donegal and the remaining 806 cases are spread across all other counties.

As of 2pm today, 1,949 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 202 were in ICU at 11am. There have been 100 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, said; “While we are starting to see the early results of our collective efforts to minimise the transmission of the virus, we are very sadly reporting an additional 93 deaths today. We cannot afford to drop our guard against the very high levels of infection that remain in the community at present. COVID-19 ICU and hospitalisation numbers are of critical concern to us, representing a very significant pressure on our healthcare workers and on the provision of acute medical and surgical non-COVID care. We need everyone to stay at home, other than for essential reasons. The more that each individual follows this advice in their everyday lives, the more we can drive down the spread of COVID-19 and minimise the impact on vital healthcare services, patients and frontline workers.”