There were 229 health care workers diagnosed with Covid-19 in the week up to last Friday, the lowest weekly figure since the end of October, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Hospitalisations have been decreasing since the week ending January 15th, with 301 in the week up to February 19th.

Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions have also been decreasing since the week ending January 8th when there were 127 admissions compared to seven in the week up to last Friday.

Hospital Report

In the last four weeks, there have been 1,689 Covid-19 cases linked to an outbreak in nursing homes, 382 linked to residential institutions and 414 linked to a hospital or a community hospital/long-stay unit.

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There were 637 Covid-19 cases linked to an outbreak in the workplace in the last four weeks.

The average number of contacts per positive case per week was three in the week ending February 19th, down from six contacts in the week up to Christmas.

There were 146 Covid-19 related deaths in the week up to last Friday. Of those deaths, 88 per cent were among people aged 65 years and over. There were 54 deaths in Dublin, while Cork (18) and Kildare (12) were the only other counties to record more than 10 deaths in the week.

There were 4,360 cases over the same period, a decrease of 1,109 cases from the previous week. Those aged 25-44 made up 30 per cent of confirmed cases with 11 per cent of cases in the over-65 cohort. Dublin accounted for 1,642 cases or 38 per cent of all new cases.

It is the seventh week in a row that weekly cases in Dublin have fallen, and the sixth week in a row that Leitrim has recorded less than 50 new cases.

While the number of new cases has fallen nationally by 20 per cent, this varies across counties, from a 56 per cent decrease in cases in Wexford to a 28 per cent increase in Clare, the CSO said.

There were 81,121 referrals for community testing where a “valid reservation was recorded” in the week up to last Friday. Some 39 per cent of referrals were from GPs over that period, a decrease from 79 per cent in the week up to January 1st.

The CSO said analysis on referral speciality type showed that while residential settings/institutions/schools referrals for testing have remained consistent for the last number of weeks, healthcare/essential worker testing increased by 6,212 in the week ending February 19th, but general Covid-19 testing fell by 7,480.

Weekly testing numbers from HSE labs and hospitals show there were 107,182 tests over the same period, while the positivity rate was 5.4 per cent, down from 5.6 the previous week.