Covid-19: Four more deaths reported as daily figure reaches lowest level since March

Anosmia, the loss of smell, is likely to be added to the list of symptoms for Covid-19, public health officials have indicated.

The National Public Health Emergency Team is looking at changing the case definition for the disease to include anosmia, according to chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan.

While predicting it will be added to the list of symptoms, he said for now Nphet wanted a change that has just been made, on the testing of contacts of a case, properly embedded. He said he did not want to see overly frequent changes to the algorithm GPs follow in diagnosing cases.

The UK has just added anosmia to the list of symptoms for doctors to watch out for, and the condition has been noted by Irish doctors treating Covid-19 patients.

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The deaths of another four patients with Covid-19 were reported by Nphet. There have now been a total of 1,547 Covid-19 related deaths in the Republic.

This is the lowest daily figure for deaths since March 27th, prompting Dr Holohan to say “we have suppressed the virus and limited its impact on public health”.

Only two of the deaths occurred over the weekend; the other two date back to April.

Dr Holohan said Ireland continues to make progress against the disease across all indicators thought he expressed concern that almost half the public believe the worst is over.

He said he was “hopeful” about a move to phases two and three on the dates outlined in the Government’s roadmap.

“If things continue at same low level we’ll be getting more optimistic by middle of next week,” he said.

Responding to questions, he said he had “no difficulty at all” about attending at the committee, where he is scheduled to give evidence for two two-hour sessions, with a break inbetween.

By spending more than two hours in the same room, those present will be considered close contacts in public health terms.

He said he would expect any meeting to be in compliance with public health advice and he would not go if were not safe.

Dr Holohan said it was unlikely regional measures would be introduced to control the virus, based on an assessment of the current situation, though consideration of these was “always on the agenda”.

Officials at the Nphet briefing said people should take advantage of the 5km movement limit to exercise with a friend.

“Moving into a new phase in Ireland’s response to Covid-19, we now have an opportunity to increase our exercise activity up to 5km and participate with a friend outside of the household. I would urge anyone who can, to take advantage of this in order to improve mental health and wellbeing,” said Dr Siobhan Ni Bhriain, HSE integrated care lead.

A total of 88 new laboratory confirmed cases of the disease was reported by NPHET at its daily briefing, bringing the total number of cases to 24,200.

Some 41 per cent of deaths occurred in hospital and 4.9 per cent in ICU, while 86.6 per cent had underlying conditions.

A total of 775 men have died, and 771 women. The median age of deaths is 84 years and the mean is 82.

So far, 391 patients have been admitted to intensive care, of whom 51 remain there.

The number of clusters of the disease in residential care facilities increased by 20 since Friday, to 459. Of these 258 are in nursing homes.

Residential care facilities account for 6,190 cases; 4,820 of these have occurred in nursing homes, up 138 since Friday.

Some 62.6 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths are associated with residential care settings; 54.5 per cent occurred in nursing homes alone.

An analysis of cases up to last Saturday found 57 per cent of cases were female and 43 per cent were male. The median age of confirmed cases was 48 years. Thirteen per cent of people were hospitalised.