The number of Covid-19 nursing home outbreaks more than doubled in the week to January 9th with a near five-fold increase in cases linked to new outbreaks, new figures show.

There were 52 new outbreaks reported in nursing homes in the week, an increase from 22 the previous week, according to the latest figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre on Covid-19 outbreaks during the pandemic.

There were 311 Covid-19 cases linked to those new outbreaks, compared with 65 new cases linked to nursing home outbreaks the previous week.

Hospital Report

There were 24 additional deaths in nursing home outbreaks over the week to January 9th, according to the latest weekly report on clusters.

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There have been 184 deaths recorded in nursing home outbreaks since the summer.

As of January 9th, there were 112 open outbreaks of the disease in nursing homes.

There has been a decrease in the number of outbreaks reported in hospitals, with 17 reported in the week to January 9th, down from 23 in the previous week.

There were 69 laboratory-confirmed cases in hospital outbreaks reported in the week to January 9th, bringing to 1,819 the total cases in hospital outbreaks since the summer.

These outbreaks led to 37 ICU cases and 147 deaths during that time.

The number of nursing home outbreaks in the second and third waves still have not exceeded the number in the first wave. There have been 187 nursing home outbreaks since the summer.

There must be no new positive Covid-19 case for 28 days for an outbreak to be declared closed.

An outbreak or cluster is defined as two or more cases of laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases.

There were an additional six outbreaks in community hospital and long-stay units, up from one the previous week, bringing to 11 the number of open outbreaks in these settings.

Open outbreaks

There was an almost five-fold increase in the number of outbreaks in residential institutions with 49 new outbreaks compared with 10 the previous week.

Overall, there have been 500 outbreaks in nursing homes, of which there are 582 in the State, and community hospital/long-stay units since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

There are 123 open outbreaks in nursing homes and community hospitals and long-stay units.

There was an increase in the number of outbreaks in workplaces with 26 new clusters reported in the week, up from 10 the previous week.

In a sign that the Level 5 lockdown may be having an effect on contacts, the number of outbreaks in families and households declined again.

There were 18 reported in the week to January 9th, down from 40 the previous week – the fourth successive week of declining numbers.

However, there was an increase in the number of outbreaks among extended family, showing the effect of increase family mixing over the Christmas and New Year period.

There were 21 new outbreaks among extended family, up from six the previous week, the highest number since the previous Level 5 restrictions were in place in November.