LATEST: New cases of Covid-19 in Laois as concern over numbers grows

A total of 22 new cases of Covid-19 have been notified in Laois today.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 1 additional death related to COVID-19.

There has been a total of 2,124 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.

As of midnight Saturday 12th December, the HPSC has been notified of 429 confirmed cases of COVID-19. There is now a total of 76,185 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland. 

Of the cases notified today;

• 198 are men / 230 are women
• 66% are under 45 years of age
• The median age is 34 years old
• 122 in Dublin, 46 in Donegal, 30 in Limerick, 22 in Laois, 20 in Cork and the remaining 189 cases are spread across all other counties. 

As of 2pm today 193 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 31 are in ICU. 13 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, said; “Today, I am concerned that we are seeing the incidence of COVID-19 rising again. 429 is a large number of cases by the standard of recent weeks and the five day moving average has now increased above 300 per day.

“Our efforts in Level 5 in recent weeks brought the 14-day incidence rate down to 78 per 100,000 population, put us in a position of having the lowest disease incidence in Europe and ultimately protected many people and saved many lives.

“Take today’s figures as a sign that we all must now reduce our social contacts, limit our interactions with those outside our households, weigh the risks of what socialising we are planning over the next two weeks, so that we can all have as safe a Christmas as possible.”