The Department of Health confirmed another 54 new cases of Covid-19 in the State on Monday night, bringing the total to 223.
Thirty of the cases are in males, 24 in females. Some 41 are associated with the east of the country, 11 are associated with the south and two are associated with the north/west of the country.
The chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan and his colleagues shared for the first time projections of case numbers likely to be disclosed in the coming days, as suggested by a statistical model developed by the Department of Health.
The model suggests that there will be 78 cases on Tuesday, 109 cases on Wednesday, and 355 cases per day by Sunday. That level of infection will require the contact tracing of 40,000 individuals, Dr Holohan said.
It came as the total number of cases in Trinity College Dublin rose to eight, and the university announced wide-ranging measures to limit the spread of the virus on-campus. These included instructions that students resident on campus must leave. Those with a home in Ireland must leave by 8pm on Tuesday, and those with a home overseas by 5pm on Wednesday.
The Department released some aggregate patient data, which showed that one-third of cases are aged between 25 and 44 years. However, more data on patients and case severity, or how sick people are with the disease, is not ready for publication. A more in-depth report on this data, as well as county-level breakdowns of cases, is expected this week.
Fatalities
Dr Holohan, asked about Ireland’s level of fatalities – two from 223 diagnosed so far – said it was too soon and the dataset too small to “draw any comfort” about how deadly the disease was proving here. He said Ireland will see deaths increasing, as other countries have seen.
The Department also shared survey data from research it had undertaken, which showed good compliance with and knowledge of key measures such as hand-washing (90 per cent) and knowledge of key issues such as the most common symptoms (84 per cent).
There is an expectation that it will be some days before the system is able to properly respond to a surge in demand for testing, Dr Colm Henry, the chief clinical officer, said. Nineteen new testing centres have been identified and that will rise to 34 by the end of the week. A significant shipment of testing kits will arrive on Thursday, which is expected to help testing teams.
In the meantime, he said people should self-isolate if needed. “The test will happen,” he said. Strong advice against ringing 999, 112 or out-of-hours services in an effort to arrange a test was reiterated.
Extended
Dr Holohan indicated that the current measures to delay the spread of the virus are now likely to be extended significantly beyond the current timeframe of March 29th. “We are expecting the current situation to last for a significant period of time; it’s difficult to put a period of time on it beyond that.”
Dr Holohan said that the department does not want to see “financial barriers in the way of people who are seeking help and guidance from GPs”. He said negotiations are ongoing between doctors’ representatives groups and the department on this issue, and praised the work done by GPs as “heroic”. He would not go into further detail.
Asked about widespread suggestions that the State would, or should, go into a so-called “lockdown”, Dr Holohan said it would be easy for him to recommend widespread closures of facilities and public transport, but “while that might reduce transmission of the virus, it would be a very disproportionate measure”.
“[A] full-scale lockdown . . . forcibly stopping movement, we think would be a disproportionate response at this point.”
Dr Holohan emphasised that the department’s advice against mass gatherings of 100 people or more did not apply to supermarket settings.
