Vulnerable groups are likely to be at a higher risk of being infected with Covid-19 now than at any other time throughout the pandemic, a virologist has said.
There were 1,042 people in hospital with the virus yesterday, with 42 on ventilators — almost as many as during the peak of the fourth wave. The number of hospital admissions peaked at 1,062 on January 11, when 19,920 cases were recorded.
Hospital admissions and case numbers have been rising in the past few weeks after an initial period of decline following the lifting of restrictions in January.
Gerald Barry, assistant professor of virology at University College Dublin, said the virus posed a significant threat to vulnerable people because of the level of spread at a time when restrictions, including mandatory mask wearing, have been lifted.
“It creates a scenario where people that are particularly vulnerable to infection are probably now at a higher risk of infection now than they have been throughout the pandemic. So, that’s a major concern for those people,” he told The Times. “Even in people that wouldn’t be considered vulnerable, the data is very clear that this infection can have long-term impacts on people’s health.”
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Health officials reported 2,100 new Covid cases from PCR tests yesterday. On Sunday, 7,271 cases from antigen tests and 5,475 cases from PCR tests — a total of 12,476 — were recorded. The total number of cases from both PCR and antigen tests since Friday was more than 30,000.
Barry said the actual number of new Covid cases was “very likely” to be higher than official figures suggested.
“The numbers we’re seeing, as we saw in January, are not accurate. They reflect a trend but they’re obviously not accurate. They weren’t accurate in January, they’re not accurate now. It’s very likely that there are many, many more cases in the country now than are actually reflected in the official numbers,” he said.
The increase in infection rates reflects a trend of greater transmission since the lifting of restrictions, according to Barry.
“We know that about 50 per cent of cases are not in hospital because of Covid. They happen to have Covid but are in there for anything and everything else. That’s an important point to make. But again, what it shows is the trend in the population that more people are living with Covid or have Covid, and so more people end up in hospital and test positive as well,” he said.
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Barry also said that Covid would continue to be an inconvenience to people, especially in the run up to attending events.
He said: “This is now living with Covid. The biggest issue really is the hassle it creates in people’s lives; the upset and disruption it creates in people’s lives. People that become sick, they can’t go out to work, they can’t go to school, they can’t go to weddings, funerals… and the higher the case numbers, the more that is going to impact on society.”
He added that it was not a surprise that Covid cases were rising again and that identifying each positive case was not a priority in Ireland’s present strategy, which was “based on symptoms”.
“If the country had a suppression approach, and they were trying to stop every chain of transmission, then you want to know where every infection is happening. We clearly don’t have that approach. We have taken the approach of effectively living with Covid and allowing it to move through the population, relatively unperturbed,” he said.
Kingston Mills, a professor of experimental immunology at Trinity College Dublin, has said that it is very significant that the number in intensive care remains much lower than during the last wave.
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Mills said that the number of severe cases was still in decline and that many of the people in the hospital with Covid tested positive only because they had to take a test on admission for another complaint.
“Without any mitigating measures it’s going to continue to spread. And vaccines are not preventing infection, they prevent serious disease but they don’t protect infection. So the infection will continue until a significant proportion of the population has got infected, which it is getting close to probably at this stage anyway,” he said on Sunday.
