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PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIALS have been notified of 6,307 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland today.
The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) said that there had been 55 deaths notified to them in the past week, bringing Ireland’s total to 5,890. In the previous week, there had been 47 deaths notified.
As of 8am today, 429 patients are in hospital with Covid-19, of whom 100 are in intensive care.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said recent research has shown many people have reviewed their plans for Christmas, reduced their social contacts and changed or postponed plans in order to protect themselves and their loved ones.
“This is a big sacrifice that many have made and will do much to protect all of us over the festive period,” he said.
“It is important that we remember that Covid-19 will still be circulating at a high level after Christmas and into the New Year, and even though it is a difficult message to hear, we must all continue to keep our social contacts low and do all we can to continue to adhere to the public health advice.”
Dr Holohan thanked young people for their “significant efforts” to act responsibly.
“It is really important that we all remember that there is no one person or group or thing to blame in the situation we find ourselves in other, than the Covid-19 virus,” he added.
He noted that booster vaccination is accelerating across the country and said the images of people queuing for their vaccine, “prioritising that appointment before Christmas are heartening”.
“Please stick with all of the measures that we know work as we move through the next few difficult weeks, including attending for vaccination.
“If you display any symptoms of Covid-19, however mild, then self-isolate and arrange a PCR test as soon as you can. This is the single most important piece of basic public health advice. Do not meet up with others and put them at risk of Covid-19 or another respiratory infection. Do not rely on a negative antigen test as a basis for not isolating.”
- With reporting by Michelle Hennessy.
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Numbers in icu’s and hospitals are low which are the important numbers
@Richarddoherty: I come here everyday to read your positive comments.
@Richarddoherty: thanks be to vaccines!
@Will Roche: That’s nice of you Will
@Richarddoherty: I think 55 is the more important number Richard. 55 empty seats at Christmas time. RIP to all who have lost loved ones
@Richarddoherty: 55 poor individuals have passed away. I’d say that’s a much more important number to be focused on
@Richarddoherty: December 20th 2020 239 patients were hospitalised with COVID and 29 of them were in ICU.
@Peter Roche: and possibly 55 empty beds in the nursing homes too on Christmas night.
@LaoisWeather: maybe so. But I’m sure u kids won’t let you go there in the future. Maybe buy you a one way trip to Switzerland instead
@LaoisWeather: insensitive comment
@Joanne Eakins: why is it insensitive?
@Peter Roche: A lot more then 55 people died this week unfortunately. There will be a lot of people having Xmas without a loved one myself included having lost my mother and nothing to do with covid. It’s a fact of life. Thankfully numbers are decreasing and that certainly is a positive.
@Richarddoherty: Yes. Vaccines are doing a miraculous job. Thank God.
Nearly 7k positive swabs today, the highest number of the pandemic so far, 3 days before the great super spreader event of the year. Covid is going to have a meaningful Christmas.
@Munster1: I hope you are well bunkered away.
@Munster1: never 7k positive swabs today. I’d say a few thousand of them are back dated.
@David: you mean hiding under our beds ha ha ha
@David: He is probably already in basement typing another comment as we speak.
@Munster1: Okay MM
@Munster1: it is quite possible to have 7k positive swabs today, but that also doesn’t equate to nearly 7,000 new cases, some of those swabs maybe from previous detections and patients are being re-tested after a few days to see if the virus is still present, increasing or decreasing
@Munster1:
Theres always one..
I’m the least scared in this comment section. I’m just stating facts.
@Munster1: do you ever have anything positive to say?
@Damo: lots. This is a comment section about covid.
@Munster1: article about Covid on the Journal, ah you are pulling my leg, that’s unusual!!
@Munster1: think little while back it was over 7k ?
@Richarddoherty: “you mean hiding under our beds ha ha ha” – so are you laughing at the people who are in a high risk category and cannot lead ordinary lives because some people refuse to follow the public health guidelines?
We’re still far below the optimistic and pessimistic models that NPHET put to the government and formed the basis of their decision to reimpose restrictions. I know nobody can really predict what way the virus will spread but surely something needs to be said about how the experts can pitch such a bleak scenario to get restrictions approved whilst either best or worst case never materialise.
@Adam: or maybe you could praise the general public for being more compliant than NPHET had expected?
@Adam: do you have a link to the models or data?
@Adam: only one i can find is from Philip Nolan’s tweet and its very hard to determine where we are. Clearer picture will be post Christmas peaking within the first two weeks in January like last year. https://twitter.com/PhilipNolan_MU/status/1472226945391808519?t=FqXvuaC0eE5qCYZjL8PDcg&s=19
@Adam: NPHET can’t really lose in this one can they? The numbers come down – “well done everyone for listening to us”. Numbers are big – “bold people not doing what we say”. It’s a bit of a farce eh?
@Adam: That’s the point. Action is taken so the bad scenarios don’t happen.
@Keaneland: The majority of the public always followed all the recommendations. The restrictions brought in Monday will not have made any impact yet. From the very start NPHET’S modelling has been off. As to your earlier remark regarding vaccines. There are unvaccinated who have managed to get through the last two years without getting covid. People who worked away all through it, people with underlying conditions, people of all ages. I’d love to know if there’s any ” science” behind that.
@Franny Ando: plenty science and loads of “common-sense” which if you looked at the ques when they allowed to opening of the niteclubs appeared to be not that common.. And just so you know, I am one of those that has avoided being diagnosed with it so far, and was conshdered essential services so never locked down euther. Just wore my mask and kept my hands clean, and used the sanitizers as needed.
@James Hanley: Why does there have to be a loser or a winner? NPHET have significantly more data than you have at your disposal, and they make recommendations based on that data. It’s pretty straightforward, to be honest.
@Joe_X: Exactly. I have neighbours and friends who never got vaccinated followed all the guidelines and never got covid.I was always dubious about getting it as I managed to avoid covid and thankfully still have.But felt pressured into it by the relentless media campaigns. I never had a flu and barely got a cold now I have a constant itch on both my upper arms and got tinnitus after my 2nd jab.I wonder now who were the sensible ones.
@Franny Ando: not alone….. I got tinnitus as well a few weeks after the second Pfizer jab. Very annoying
The Cron is coming, the unvaxed are about to face the storm, naked of any armour or umbrellas. Your natural immunity is about to be tested, God speed
@Captain CJ: Omicron is looking to be mild, so hopefully not too many will end up sick or in hospital.
@Captain CJ: Looks possible alright: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-science-idCAKBN2IZ1XI
@Captain CJ: Well considering Delta hasn’t bothered a lot of them I dont see why the should worry about Omicron.:)
@Tomás Barrett: Even if 60% less need hospitalisation, a small % of a huge number will still be big,and the unvaxed are the infantry in the battle while the vaxed watch on in full armour from horseback.
@Tomás Barrett: couple of interesting articles I came across, concerning the Omicron variant and it’s effect on the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/21/holiday-advice-omicron-family/
and
Some interesting reading.
@Captain CJ:
What are you on about..
@Captain CJ: The Omi ? or natures vaccine as they call it
Just listened to Matt Cooper interview South African health proffesor…
6,000 hospital cases with Delta variant..
600 cases with omecron..
What are we letting this false media control us..
R.t.e news reporting new chip available to insert under your skin…
Really folks
@Raymond Purdue: an optional subdermal chip which displays your covid info. You can get it if you want you won’t have a gun held to your head. But the anti crowd will jump on that and next week a deep fake video will emerge of Stephen Donnelly announcing its compulsory to get chipped followed by videos of reports of people becoming magnets with cutlery following them down the road. Amazon will sell out of faraday cages and supermarkets of tin foil
@Raymond Purdue: South Africa has a significantly younger age profile than a lot of European countries. I think that is one of the reasons for taking the lower hospital numbers there at face value. Will have to wait and see how bad it affects older cohort. What’s the new chip for under your skin?
@Raymond Purdue: any chance you have taken it out of context? Other reports are of the opinion that Omicron has actually peaked there. Also there is again the issue of comparing us to countries that we cannot and should not be compared to due to climatic, population and social attitude differences.
@Raymond Purdue: just watched the BBC news at 10. That story was reported in detail. So no conspiracy here folks – please remove the tin foil hats when leaving the building.
@Terence Martin: they are comparing their numbers with delta v the numbers with omicron. The age of the population is the same in both cases. If omicron is no more deadly than delta then the reduction in hospital numbers should be reasonably relative to here also if maybe not on quite the same scale.
@offtheball: which bit? SA numbers or the chip?
@Joe_X: SA numbers. The chip story is on the RTÉ news website and app. Still no conspiracy story here.
Are those 6000+ all self isolating over Christmas?
@Genera L Consensus: They’re supposed to but who can tell?
Icu numbers still going in the right direction
@Niamh Hayes: not really considering 4 people died in intensive care in the last 24 hours. Yesterday 104 in icu today 100. 8 discharges & 8 admissions means 4 people sadly lost their lives to this disease. Keeping an eye on the covid tracker app for the last few weeks & people are dying every day so a bit insensitive to applaud a drop in cases in icu
@Niamh Hayes:
A few weeks ago all the “experts” here were talking about the ICU numbers being the most important. Funny to see how it has now gone back to the number of cases being the most important figure in the analysis of covid in ireland.
@White Chapel: it takes up to 2 weeks for case numbers to translate into hospital numbers and can take a few more weeks for those to translate into icu numbers. A percentage of cases will always turn into hospital admissions & then icu so the higher the case numbers the the percentage of cases that will end up in hospital is higher, but then u knew this already because it has been said over & over again
@Martina Masterson:
I was referring to the numbers in the autumn where overall case numbers were lower, but a greater proportion of these were in ICU as the number of people vaccinated was lower.
At that time, all the experts like yourself were ignoring the low levels of cases and focussed instead on the relatively high numbers in ICU, whereas today it is the opposite, with your focus on total case numbers rather than lower numbers of ICU patients. You people have some sort of aversion to positive or optimistic reports.
Thanks for your presumptuous and condescending reply though. I can only assume you’re a public health expert..
@White Chapel: I’ll put it simply for you shall I. They are all connected. One leads to the other. Where in ur initial comment does it explain that u were comparing the situation we now find ourselves in with the autumn. It seems to me that u don’t like being challenged. Maybe explain yourself better in the future & u won’t be challenged. I am not a public health expert nor have I an aversion to ‘good’ news I simply use my brain to analyse the data available & judge it to be either good news or bad news based on this analysis. Happy Christmas & goodnight
@White Chapel: What’s so hard to grasp about a fall in ICU patients actually being a bad thing?
@Martina Masterson:Of course they never tell you whether they died from or with the virus.
@OnlyHereForTheComments:
Show me where did I say anything of the sort?
I was questioning why people are now focusing on increasing case numbers when ICU numbers are remaining low (a positive statistic). The same people were ignoring case numbers earlier in the year when ICU numbers were relatively high.
Such is the desire to perpetuate pessimism, fear and misery.
Can you grasp that.
@Martina Masterson:
You obviously lack basic comprehension.
I said it above “weeks ago” where the focus was on ICU numbers which were high relative to cases, and cases were not considered important by the “experts” on this comment forum.
How about I keep it simple for you. Cases are increasing but ICU numbers are staying down. The proportion of ICU beds occupied by covid patients is also stating low. This is positive, but those who thrive on misery need to concentrate on the negative and feel the need to keep this nonsense up..
@Martina Masterson: a small percentage of a not very large number still leads to less numbers than we saw last January
@Martina Masterson: Why are you assuming 4 people died!!This was explained by NPHET and others ad infinitum that a drop in ICU numbers they were not deaths.They are patients no longer ill enough to need an ICU bed and were moved into general hospital ward.
Rest in peace and thoughts with the families.
Hopefully the 6,000 odd registered don’t have to go to hospital and get well soon, naturally boosted.
Will feel bad passing out Christmas dinner to granny in the garden from the window.
Good to see the pub restrictions are working… Cases in 5 to 12 year old are well down…
Ya see, closing pubs early is having a positive effect on the spread of the virus.
Great to see the effectiveness of the vaccines . I know people with boosters that are still very unwell from covid , and yes the vaccine brigate will more than likely comment and abuse me because my views don’t align with theirs . For the vaccine brigate , I am double jabbed before you say anything .
@Roisin Lyons: If very unwell with Covid and vaccinated do you not realise just how much many of those would probably be more seriously unwell or in hospital be if unvaccinated? Comments like this just illustrate why people should get vaccinated.
@Heather Knowles: there is no actual way of knowing that the person would suffer worse symptoms if they had not received the vaccine. – although many ‘professionals’ would state otherwise , I have yet to hear anyone give a convincing reason why they know this to be true!! Likewise- when an unvaccinated person has little or no symptoms- professionals don’t know why!!! Virus’s are random!
@Angela Lavin:
Back to bed Angela. We will wake you up when it’s all done.
@Kevin: Can you refute what this lady is saying.
I’m looking at all the jokes on here commenting of the covid-19 pandemic.
But here’s something for all you to think about while yer are planning yer Christmas.
Spare a thought for all the public patients that have been told they have a serious medical condition, and then to be told your on a waiting list that is any time from 8 months to 2 year before you are likely to be called to a clinic, some of these will no longer be with us or so ill that they have no chance.
Then make a joke of covid-19, this pandemic is stretching the public health system to braking point, and people are dying from other illnesses that we will never be told about.
@Jimmy Kiely: very good point. Well said.
@Jimmy Kiely: Unfortunately this was something that was occurring long before covid. 800000 were on the waiting lists. The health service was at breaking point then. Nothing has changed. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of levity it’s good for ones mental health and it helps with cope with the relentless neverending covid news.
@Franny Ando: Do you think if it’s not reported on it not happening.
Yes there were waiting list for hospital service but people were allowed attend clinic, have you been to any of the outpatient clinic lately have you seen the absents of patients.
You can have your fun with your covid jokes but some of us have more serious health problems than covid- 19.
Have a nice and healthy Christmas.
How many of the 55 deaths was cv19 solely responsible for, maybe 3.
@Sean: no. 55. The number is there in front of you. It contributed either partially or wholley to those deaths. If it did not, they would not have been counted.
@Joe_X: incorrect as suits their narrative to keep us from full reopening. If a man at 87 with multi illness and has days to live and happens to contact cv19,that cv19 has nothing to do with his death. Unfortunately the cancer,heart disease got him not cv19.
Amazing the way Tonys message hasnt changed, when we had less than 100 cases a day last summer he was asking people to limit their contacts
@Paul Keenan: amazing alright. Imagine the chief medical officer going around telling people how not to spread a respiratory disease to each other. I mean, I’m actually stunned. I though the big friendly giant (gubbermint) blew the virus into our bedrooms at night. Blimey.
Close the schools…
Any breakdown of number of cases of vacinated V unvaccinated in hospital and in ICU?
@Paul Crowley: 53% unvaccinated in ICU today
@Ruth O’Mahony:So 7% of population are responsible for over half cases in ICU. Case proven.
@Ruth O’Mahony: so 53% of the icu numbers coming from the 30% of the full population that aren’t vaccinated for what ever reason. Great to see the vaccine offers some protection.
@Paul Crowley: 7% of the population that are of age to receive a vaccine. But around 30% of the full population.
@Ruth O’Mahony: Any source for that figure because the last data I’ve seen where 53% was mentioned was for admissions between July and November, and that figure included partially vaccinated also.
I can’t find any ICU vaccine status data for today.
@Ruth O’Mahony:
False. 100 out of 300 ICU beds are occupied by covid patients
@JedBartlett: It was on RTÉ earlier when covering weekly update from HSE.
@White Chapel: And 53 of those 100 are unvaccinated. Quite straightforward.
@OnlyHereForTheComments:
So basically half vaccinated and half unvaccinated. Quite straightforward.
What was your point again?
@OnlyHereForTheComments: breakdown of the 7% of the country that aren’t vaxxed would be good. Not allowed because of conflicting other diseases , religion , nationality, or vaccine hesitant.
@White Chapel: the just over half of unvaccinated in ICU due to CoViD-19 represent 7% of the population over 12 that is eligible for vacination and the just under half of vaccinated people represent the remaining 93% that is eligible for receiving the vaccine. Now if you want to use total population figures, it means that roughly 7% of the population over 12, and all the kids under 12 are represented by half the patients in ICU due to CoViD-19, roughly 30% of the total population of the country, while 93% of the population over 12, or if you prefer, roughly 70% of the total population, (but no one under 12) represent the other half. Hope that clears things up for you. You seem to be having awful problems with the simplicity of the maths.
@Ruth O’Mahony: Of the 53% you mention, do you know how many are unable to take the vaccine because they are immunocompromised? Thanks
@Joe_X:
Yea I have awful problems with maths alright.
A bigger problem is the comment section health science “experts” who engage in topics like vaccinated Vs unvaccinated patients in ICU.
The likes of you coming up with over simplistic nonsense about the under 12 age cohort and vaccine status as if these were the only factors determining infection.
The data shows that those in older age cohorts and those with underlying conditions are those more at risk whether vaccinated not.
But you’re the expert at the end of the day..
Heard the omicron variant referred to as the megatron today. As in “My God I hope I don’t catch the Megatron”, the person who said it is a little touched to be fair but I got some giggle out of it. Ah good times.
I see The Journal hasn’t posted yesterday’s hospital and ICU numbers for comparison today. I’m guessing they are down?
@Football in the Groin: icu are down due to 4 deaths. The information is out there u just have to look
@Football in the Groin: According to RTÉ, numbers in hospital are down 14 and ICU down 2 (hopefully those 2 were discharged).
@Martina Masterson: Didn’t see your post before I replied, Martina. Oh god, that’s awful.
@FrustratedASDMum: I’ve been keeping an eye on the covid tracker app for a while now & people are dying every day. It’s so unnecessary & sad. Thoughts go out to their poor families
@Martina Masterson: maybe, but they haven’t gone up either.
Omg. It’s not improving. Happy Christmas everyone :)
honest question .I see a few (mostly in their 30s I think) without any mask at all in supermarkets. What’s the odds there unable to wear a mask due to a medical condition? they all look healthy imo and are eyeballing anyone who stares at them..but maybe they can’t wear a mask for some reason
@Tigher Roulie: The eyeballing is the giveaway. Absolutely aching for someone to make a comment so they can go off on a rant. These people are best ignored and deprived of the confrontational oxygen they desire. Nothing to go back to their mates in the anti-mask telegram group with.
Look the Spanish flu is still about today only that it’s much less lethal. Covid will be the same, the Omnicron variant is evidence of this. Everyone will get it some will suffer more than others that’s unfortunate but life must go on.
Save us Tony…
@John Smith: Tony didn’t care about the smear test victims or the old people in nursing homes
INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH IVOR CUMMINS https://rumble.com/vqcxcf-were-hurtling-towards-a-totalitarian-technocracy..html
Deaths in Ireland in last yrs, see how fabricated NPHET distort the truth, no 5.5k deaths due to cv19 in 2020. All deaths are sad but please no fake news
2018 31,116,
2019 31,134
2020 31,765
The strive to stop an airborne virus continues. The obsession with cases is ridiculous.
Deaths in Ireland in last 3yrs, see how fabricated NPHET distort the truth, no 5.5k deaths due to cv19 in 2020. All deaths are sad but please no fake news . Remember only at most 3% of people in ICU are there due to CV19. No more than 1200 people died as direct result of contacting CV19. Love the data below, love it
2018 31,116,
2019 31,134
2020 31,765
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