Covid-19: Ireland's incidence rate continues to fall, but health officials warn more work is needed

Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, pictured at the Covid-19 press briefing in Dublin. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

Ireland is boasting the second-best incidence rate for Covid-19 in Europe at present as case numbers continue to fall across the country.

Only Finland, among the group of EU and UK countries used by way of comparison, has a lower 14-day incidence rate than Ireland’s current standing of 145 cases per 100,000 people. 

That figure had been 306 just weeks ago.

At the latest bi-weekly briefing from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) in Dublin, the chief medical officer (CMO) Dr Tony Holohan stressed that more work needs to be done, though.

The briefing heard that one additional death had been notified in the past 24 hours, together with 395 additional cases of the disease, bringing the mortality total and overall number of confirmed cases to 1,965 and 66,632 respectively.

Cases continue to fall at an even rate across the country, including in Dublin where the rate of descent has now caught up with other counties, with one exception: Donegal.

While the disease continues to decline in the Ulster county, it is at a far slower rate than seen elsewhere.

Dr Holohan suggested that, without getting into specifics, public health officials in the county had noted behaviour at funerals and wakes, and at the church part of such gatherings, which are not in line with public health advice.

Nevertheless, he suggested that there is still plenty of time for the trend to right itself and for Ireland to emerge from Level 5 restrictions en masse on December 1.

“We still have several weeks to go, there is still time for significant improvement to take place,” he said.

We’ve seen great progress. There is absolutely no reason that we wouldn’t have confidence that that pattern would continue.

With regard to the prospect of an effective vaccine, prompted by the announcement by pharma giant Pfizer that trials of its main candidate have proven to be 90% effective in suppressing the disease, Dr Holohan said, “The news is very encouraging, but the message should not be that we’ve cracked this”.

Professor Philip Nolan, says Ireland's reproductive 'R' number is now 0.6 nationally. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

He said that Nphet continues “to be hopeful” that such a vaccine might be delivered next year.

Professor Philip Nolan, the head of Nphet’s epidemiological modelling group, said that while he continues to have “significant concerns” regarding the prevalence of the disease in older cohorts, there are two trends that he is most interested in: a reduction in growth rate of between 6% and 8% per day, and the stabilisation of the reproductive, or R, number.

The former is currently 6% he said, while the R number has dropped further from last week’s estimate of between 0.7 and 0.9 to “much closer to 0.6”, he said.

“We are only halfway down the curve that we had gone up,” Professor Nolan said.

Regarding his agreement with Tánaiste Leo Varadkar’s assertion that Irish people abroad should not be booking flights home for Christmas, the CMO said “we’re concerned about the position in other countries as compared to here”.

“We hope to continue to improve. Unfortunately many countries in Europe are still in a deteriorating situation.”

Professor Nolan said that, should cases fall to 100-per-day or lower, it would “buy” the country a degree of “comfort” at Christmas.

“A fall to 100 gives us options. We don’t have options at 1,000 cases per day,” he said.