Cork has third-lowest Covid rate in country but situation 'still fragile'

Dr Nuala O'Connor, Covid lead for the Irish College of General Practitioners and Cork GP, has warned that the situation is still 'fragile'. Picture: Larry Cummins

Three more people have died with Covid-19 and 313 new cases of the virus have been diagnosed.  

Thirty-five patients with Covid-19 are in ICU, with 197 Covid-19 patients being treated in hospital. There were 12 additional hospitalisations in the previous 24 hours.

Of the new cases, 70 are in Dublin, 31 are in Mayo, 21 are in Kilkenny, 19 are in Donegal, 18 are in Laois and the remaining 154 cases are spread across 19 other counties.  

There are now 81.2 confirmed cases of the virus per 100,000 people nationally, with 3,869 cases confirmed in the last 14 days.

Donegal has the highest incidence rate at 229.9 per 100,000 followed by Kilkenny with 194.5 and Louth with 159.8.

However, it is not all bad news, Cork has the third-lowest incidence rate in the country at 12 cases per 100,000, beaten only by Kerry and Leitrim, which have both been completely free of newly confirmed cases in the past 14 days.

But Dr Nuala O'Connor, Covid lead for the Irish College of General Practitioners and Cork GP, has warned the situation is still "fragile."

"It's good that the numbers have been coming down in Cork because the numbers had been high," Dr O'Connor told the Irish Examiner.

But it's a very fragile thing. And the numbers in the country are still too high. 

"From next weekend, we're going to have inter-county travel, we'll have people mixing and coming from different counties so I think it's very important that if people want to be able to spend time with their extended family and friends over Christmas that they have to be careful to keep their number of social contacts small, to decide who are the people that they want to spend time with over Christmas and to chose how they  spend their time with them – so it's about avoiding crowded, poorly ventilated spaces, wearing masks, keep their distance, wash their hands and just be very mindful if there is someone who is medically vulnerable in their circle."

Of the newly notified cases: 

• 169 are women and 144 are men.
• The median age of those diagnosed is 35 and 67% are aged under 45.
• There has been a total of 2,120 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland and 75,507 confirmed cases. 


• Nationally, the positivity rate has been at 2.8% over the last seven days.