Nineteen Covid-19 deaths in the past week, figures show

There were 19 deaths from Covid-19 in the week to Tuesday, the latest weekly figures on mortalities from the coronavirus disease have shown.

This is a reduction from the 32 deaths reported the previous week, according to figures published by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC), the HSE unit that monitors the virus.

It brings to 6,291 the total number of deaths from Covid-19 during the five waves of the pandemic over the past 23 months.

The average age of people who died recently from the virus remained in older age groups, with the mean age being 82 years and the median age standing at 87.

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Separately, the HPSC reported a total of 11,036 additional cases of Covid-19 on Thursday. This comprised 5,649 PCR-confirmed cases which were notified on Thursday and 5,387 people who registered a positive antigen test through the HSE portal on Wednesday.

As of 8am on Thursday, 595 Covid-19 patients were hospitalised, of whom 63 were in ICU.

The weekly HPSC figures on Covid-19 deaths differ from data published by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), which reports total deaths notified during the previous week. The HPSC reports the number of deaths that occurred during that week.

Further deaths may still be notified to the HPSC for the week.

On Wednesday, Nphet said that it had been notified of an additional 63 deaths, many of which occurred prior to the latest weekly reporting period.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, almost 90 per cent of deaths occurred in people aged 65 years and over. Just more than 83 per cent of people who died had an underlying health condition.

The deaths included 21 healthcare workers, or 0.3 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths.

Some 3,377 deaths, or 54 per cent of the total, were men. Just more than one in every 10 deaths were among people who had been admitted to hospital intensive care units.

Of 3,731 people whose deaths were linked to Covid-19 outbreaks, some 36 per cent died in nursing homes while 14 per cent died in hospitals.

Louth has had the highest mortality rate with 187 deaths per 100,000 people followed by Mayo with 185 deaths per 100,000. Sligo had the lowest mortality rate with 70 deaths per 100,000.

There were 595 people with confirmed Covid-19 cases in hospital on Thursday morning, which included 63 people in ICUs, down from a high of 132 in the most recent waves in late November.

Wave of infection

The latest HPSC weekly epidemiological report, published on Thursday, showed that there were 548,273 Covid-19 cases, confirmed with PCR tests, recorded in the most recent wave of infection and 112,796 positive antigen tests registered between January 14th and February 5th.

On the confirmed PCR cases, infection rates were highest among those aged between 19 and 24 and then among those aged between 35 and 44.

The majority of people registered positive antigen tests were aged between 19 and 39.

The latest weekly figures on clusters show there were 27 new outbreaks in nursing homes, down three on last week. An outbreak is defined as two or more linked cases.

There were 17 new outbreaks reported in hospitals, a reduction of one on last week.

There were just seven new outbreaks reported in schools but the data comes with a warning that this “may be underestimated due to public health focus on key settings at present”.

Those settings include hospitals and nursing homes. The HPSC said that “not all school outbreaks require public health prioritisation and therefore are not reported”.