19 August 2021: Rise of COVID-19 cases numbers may be ‘unsustainable’ while benefits of vaccination program show
For the week ending 13 August 2021, more than 10,000 cases of COVID-19 were reported by the Department of Health. The Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Ronan Glynn, said at the beginning of July, we had an average of seven admissions per day to hospital. Over the past week, we have recorded 31 admissions per day. In early July, less than one person was being admitted to ICU with COVID-19 on average per day; over the past week we have seen four admissions to ICU per day’.
Dr Ronan Glynn continued that vaccines are now preventing ‘at least 10,000 cases and about 500 hospital admissions every week’. The Deputy CMO said that if ‘we didn't have vaccination, our current 14-day incidence rate would be approximately 1,000 per 100,000. We would be seeing up to 50 people admitted to hospital for every 1,000 cases reported’.
The Chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team's (NPHET) Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, Professor Nolan, described the rise in COVID-19 incidence as ‘not sustainable’. He said that ‘the real concern is that there is an underlying established pattern of exponential growth, with cases growing at about 3.7% per day since 19 June, and numbers in hospital growing at a similar rate, 4% per day, since early July’.
On 17 August 2021 the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, reported that the 14-day incidence rate of the virus is 493 per 100,000, the highest since 31 January. He said that the incidence of the disease is rising steadily in nearly all age groups and in 21 out of 26 counties. On August 19 2021, Dr Holohan reported that there was a rapid rise in the incidence of the disease across the country with 12,348 cases reported in the last seven days, ‘this means that the virus is now circulating widely in our communities’. On 19 August, the number of people being treated for the virus in hospital was 244. There were 52 Covid-19 patients in intensive care.
Meanwhile, new figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre show that in the two weeks up to 09 August 2021, 111 patients contracted COVID-19 in a healthcare setting. It represents just 0.5% of all cases during the period. Eighty health staff also contracted the virus in a healthcare setting, representing just 0.3% of all cases in the period.