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A further 1,546 cases of Covid-19 and nine deaths relating to the virus have been reported in the State, according to the Department of Health.
This takes the total number of cases reported in the Republic, since the pandemic began, to 88,439, and total deaths to 2,213.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has confirmed that an “unscheduled” Cabinet meeting will take place on Wednesday because of concerns about the rapid and “exponential growth” in the number of Covid-19 cases in recent days.
Last week 234 people had been hospitalised with Covid-19, that figure had risen to 409 on Tuesday which was further cause for concern, he said.
Ireland did not want to be in the same position as the UK where the NHS was overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases.
The Cabinet will be looking at the advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) which remained that there should be a return to “full” Level 5 restrictions which would mean the closure of non-essential retail along with gyms and leisure centres.
However, the Minister said that regardless of what level of restrictions the country was at, the advice remained to limit the number of contacts. Some people diagnosed as positive in recent days had “up to 30 close contacts”. Social events were happening with too many people attending, he said.
The Cabinet’s position remained that schools should open next week as school was a safer place for children than the community.
Cases to GPs
Meanwhile, the Covid lead for the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP), Dr Nuala O’Connor has said she was expecting a big rise in the number of Covid cases in the coming days as GPs had noticed a 65 per cent increase in referrals for Covid tests in the past week.
By the afternoon on Tuesday, Dr O’Connor said 14,000 referrals had been made by GPs across the State for patients to receive Covid-19 tests.
During the first week of December GPs had made 25,000 referrals for the whole week, for the fourth week of December that had risen to 70,000, she said.
“We’re going to see the impact of socialising pre-Christmas and over the Christmas period. That’s going to affect the numbers in the next week to 10 days.”
It was alarming that the number of contacts for some was 15 people, she added.
The number of people being hospitalised with coronavirus has “increased sharply” in the last two days, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan.
There were 359 Covid-19 patients in hospital on Monday, of which 41 had been admitted in the previous 24 hours. Some 30 patients were in intensive care, with five admitted in the previous 24 hours.
Dr Holohan said public health officials were also concerned by a “steep rise in the positivity rates” from community testing, a metric indicating how prevalent the virus was among the general population.
The current seven-day average rate of positive tests had risen to 9.2 per cent, up from 5.2 per cent on December 18th.
Dr O’Connor said another cause for concern was the number of people who were self declaring as they had become aware of a contact who had tested positive.
Anyone who had been a close contact should stay at home and restrict their movements for 14 days.
“We have people ringing up looking to be tested. Timing is important, we can’t do it too soon, we try to schedule it around Day 5.
“We want people to stay home and wait for the contact tracers to call them,” she said.
In Ireland there was “a bit of an obsession with tests”, but it was people’s behaviour that was important rather than the test itself, said Dr O’Connor.
Paul Reid, Health Service Executive (HSE) chief executive, said there was an “increasing and concerning” number of people not answering contact tracers calls over the Christmas period. The tracing teams were a “valuable resource” against the spread of Covid-19, he wrote on Twitter.
A HSE spokeswoman said if people did not answer the phone to contact tracers they would leave a voicemail. The tracing teams would attempt to contact people up to five times over two days, she said.
Vaccine
The first Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines will be administered in Ireland today, at St James’s and Beaumont hospitals in Dublin, Cork University Hospital and University Hospital Galway.
Among those who will be the first to receive the vaccine will be an ICU staff nurse, a Covid ward nurse, a junior doctor and an allied health professional.
Currently there are just less than 10,000 doses of the two-step Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine in the country. Some 30,000 more are due to arrive on Tuesday.
This will be followed by 40,000 a week throughout January and early February. The plan is to vaccinate 20,000 people a week from early January, with this increasing to 40,000 over the course of the month and into February.