Coronavirus: Figures show sharp increase in community transmissions

A third death and a further 191 cases of coronavirus were reported in the State on Thursday night, bringing the total number of known cases to 557.

The Department of Health said the third person to die as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak was a female from the east of the country.

The State's chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan, said the department had not been told whether the woman suffered from an underlying condition. He would not disclose her age.

The increase in confirmed cases marks a record number of new infections for the sixth day in a row and the first time the daily increase has entered three figures.

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The number of new diagnoses more than doubled from the 74 reported on Wednesday, reflecting the exponential or sharp curve-like growth in cases.

The increase in overall diagnosed cases marks a 52 per cent increase from the total of 366 a day earlier. The surge in cases came after a significant increase in the number of tests being carried out on people displaying symptoms.

The Government’s strategy is to flatten the curve and delay the peak of cases to enable the health system to cope with people suffering the most from infections. The majority of infected people will suffer only mild symptoms.

Dr Holohan said the day-on-day increases were in line with what the department had expected earlier this week, though the outbreak was “still at an early stage” in the country, he said.

The department does not expect to see any results from the social-distancing measures – including restrictions on mass gatherings and school closures – introduced a week ago until the end of this month given that the disease has a full incubation period of about 14 days.

The 191 newly diagnosed cases were people infected prior to the measures, he said.

“In relative terms, these are small numbers compared to where we think we might get to,” he told reporters at the department’s daily briefing on Thursday evening.

“We obviously hope and anticipate that some of the social-distancing measures will flatten this growth but we expect to continue to see growth in the numbers.”

Testing challenge

Dr Colm Henry, chief clinical officer at the Health Service Executive, said it had been a "considerable challenge" to set up 32 Covid-19 testing sites "on an unprecedented scale" over a "very short period of time".

He said the State had received 35,000 testing and would need more but faced “huge challenges in a very volatile international environment securing testing equipment”.

Dr Holohan said he had seen “high degrees of compliance” with the social-distancing measures but warned young people that while they may experience mild symptoms if infected, they posed a risk to “vulnerable” members in their families and communities if they passed the virus on.

Further details from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre showed that of 350 cases notified at midnight on Tuesday, 55 per cent were male and 43 per cent female, with 26 reported clusters of infection accounting for 137 of the cases.

The average age of those diagnosed was 43. Two-thirds of the people diagnosed with Covid-19 are under the age of 55.

Some 35 per cent of the 350 cases came as a result of community transmission, a steep increase from 22 per cent in previously reported figures. Health officials are still investigating how 71 people, or a fifth of the latest batch of analysed cases, became infected.

In 31 per cent of the cases, the infected had to be hospitalised, while 2 per cent, or seven people, were admitted to an intensive care unit. The death rate among the cases was 0.6 per cent.

About one in four of this group were healthcare workers, with 28 of these 84 people becoming infected as a result of foreign travel to an affected area.

Dublin had the highest number of cases with 172, followed by Cork with 62 and Limerick with 14. Monaghan is the only county in the State that does not yet have a confirmed case.