Ireland’s trajectory remains “very uncertain” as almost 1,800 new cases of Covid-19 — the highest daily figure since January — were reported last night.
A further 1,782 cases of the virus were recorded yesterday. The Department of Health said that 198 patients were being treated for the disease in hospital, including 28 in intensive care units.
Health officials said the disease incidence rate remained high and was continuing to increase, particularly in younger age groups. “Disease profile varies across counties, with Donegal, Louth and Galway showing very high incidence rates,” the department said. “The public health advice remains that those who are not fully vaccinated should avoid high risk environments and activities.”
More than six million vaccine doses have now been administered in Ireland, with about 2.8 million people fully vaccinated and 3.2 million having received their first dose. Almost 85 per cent of people aged 16 and over have either registered or received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“The effectiveness of vaccination is now clearly apparent in the lower levels of severe disease, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and mortality during the current wave,” the department added.
Advertisement
It comes as Stephen Donnelly, the health minister, confirmed this week that registration for mRNA vaccines for children aged 12-15 would open next week.
Lucy Jessop, director of public health at the HSE’s national immunisation office, said: “You should consider getting your child the Covid-19 vaccine if you want to protect them against the impact of Covid-19 or to protect them against the rare possibility of getting severe Covid-19 and perhaps developing long Covid,” she said.
Meanwhile, new advice from the HSE was sent to maternity hospitals yesterday to allow partners of pregnant women to attend their 12-week scans and caesarean sections. Colm Henry, the HSE’s chief clinic officer, said the aim was to get back to pre-pandemic visiting rights. “It is very hard to unravel and pretend the pandemic isn’t there because of the risk the virus presents to unvaccinated pregnant women,” he said.
The move came after campaigners criticised the government after meetings were called to provide new guidelines for Failte Ireland, but not for maternity restrictions following an event organised by Katherine Zappone at the Merrion Hotel.
The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust said yesterday that its services had treated 12 pregnant women who had tested positive for Covid-19 in the past week. “Covid is affecting capacity issues because babies with the virus have to be isolated for ten days after they are born,” it said in a statement.
Advertisement
“Unvaccinated pregnant women are more likely to get Covid and if they become infected, they are more likely to become unwell. If pregnant women become unwell due to Covid, they are more likely to need admission to hospital and require additional respiratory support.”
Peter McKenna, the HSE’s clinical director of the women and infants health programme, told RTE Radio that to date Covid-19 had caused six stillbirths, one late miscarriage due to Covid Placentitis, and four near misses, meaning the baby would have died if it had not been delivered as an emergency due to foetal surveillance.
“I think it’s important to consider in the background that the reason we’re discussing this is because there’s two very important conflicting priorities — one is the priority to keep people safe and the other is to keep the process of childbirth as normal as possible and underlying this conversation is the tension between these two priorities,” McKenna told Morning Ireland.
“Then the 12-week scan also — so these are being asked to facilitate partners and will be coming in the next couple of weeks when people can adapt to it.
“What we do know is that the current variant of the virus, the Delta variant, is more aggressive when it comes to dealing with pregnant women and a few weeks ago when we had numbers in intensive care in their teens, a disproportionate number of these were pregnant women. So what’s happening in Northern Ireland is just a manifestation of what happens when the Delta variant runs rampant in a population that is unvaccinated.”
Advertisement
McKenna said other visiting restrictions would continue at maternity hospitals in an attempt to keep the footfall as low as possible.
It is understood the government will now look at resuming first holy communions and confirmations next month. Malcolm Noonan, a Green Party TD and minister, told Newstalk: “I think we are conscious of the challenge posed around communions and confirmations and the fact that families of young people are waiting on and I think we do want to try and resolve that again, in a safe manner.”
