CMO: 'Not the time' for parties as virus is 'thriving' in community

Dr Tony Holohan said the virus was spreading rapidly across the country, with 20 counties having an infection rate above 100 cases per 100,000 population. File picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) has urged people to work and stay at home as much as possible and warned that now is “not the time” for parties or play dates.

Dr Tony Holohan was speaking at the Department of Health briefing on Monday evening where 825 new cases of Covid-19 and one further death was confirmed.

The numbers follow a record increase in daily case numbers on Saturday when over 1,000 cases were confirmed and bring to 43,351 the total number of cases to date.

One additional death was also confirmed on Monday, bringing the total number of deaths to 1,827.

Dr Holohan said the virus was spreading rapidly across the country, with 20 counties having an infection rate above 100 cases per 100,000 population.

The positivity rate had risen to 5.6%, with significant increases over the weekend (6% on Saturday and 7.2% on Sunday) and one county has a positivity rate of 11%.

As a result, hospital admissions had increased from 134 last week to 224 on Monday, while the number of people in intensive care increased from 22 last week to 32 on Monday.

The virus is “thriving” in the community and the chains of transmission need to be broken to protect the health service, education, childcare, and the vulnerable in society, the CMO said, urging people to stay away from other people as much as possible.

“One of the things that I’m genuinely concerned about is that there has been a creep of people who did work from home in the earlier stages of this but who are now creeping back into the office,” Dr Holohan said.

“I’m appealing to people if you can work from home, work from home,” he said.

“When it comes to social activities now is not the time for house parties, now is not the time for play dates, now is not the time for birthday parties; all of these activities are having contributions right around the country,” Dr Holohan said.

The briefing heard that eight new outbreaks involving 44 cases had been detected in the Traveller community but that no other new outbreaks were confirmed in “at-risk” groups.

Dr Holohan said co-operation with authorities in the North would continue and accepted that measures must be “broadly similar” on both sides of the border but said that it was key that people reduced their movements and discretionary activities.

The briefing also heard from 23-year-old Owen O’Flynn, a doctor at University Hospital Kerry, who suffered acute respiratory and heart failure due to Covid-19 and warned that nobody, regardless of age, was immune to its effects.

“I had two major system failures as part of the post-Covid syndrome, both an acute respiratory failure and an acute heart failure. At that point I started to wonder would I ever get out of ICU, would I die in there?”, Dr O’Flynn said.

“While the elderly are most at risk from Covid-19, this virus can still have devastating effects on people of any age and there is no real way to tell who will deteriorate and who will get through it without severe symptoms,” he said.