Well being officers in Eire, the place a extra infectious variant of the coronavirus first found in England has been surging, stated on Saturday they imagine three instances of one other new variant present in South Africa had been contained.
Eire is grappling with a Covid-19 surge that has exceeded final 12 months’s first wave. It confirmed the primary instances of the extra infectious variant present in South Africa on Friday in individuals who had travelled to Eire from South Africa over the Christmas holidays.
Eire has reported an growing presence of the variant first present in England. It was detected in 25% of constructive instances that underwent additional testing within the week to three January, up from simply 9% two weeks earlier.
“The UK variant is of extra concern to us purely due to the quantity of virus that’s on the island, and we all know that it’s transmitting locally,” Cillian De Gascun, the pinnacle of Eire’s nationwide virus laboratory, informed nationwide broadcaster RTE.
“The advantage of the South African variant is we all know precisely the place these instances got here from, they’ve been contained, managed and make contact with traced, and to the perfect of my data there was no onward transmission.”
The federal government introduced its strictest lockdown measures since early final 12 months on Wednesday, warning {that a} “tsunami” of infections fuelled by the UK variant and the comfort of curbs forward of Christmas might overwhelm the healthcare system.
The variety of sufferers in Irish hospitals with Covid-19 rose by 12% within the area of 24 hours on Saturday to 1,285, having in current days exceeded the height of 881 set in the course of the first wave of infections.
Fourteen extra sufferers had been admitted to intensive care models, bringing the whole quantity receiving essential care to 119 and left simply 27 of the 284 ICU beds within the nation’s public hospitals empty.
These hospitals can enhance ICU capability safely to 375, the pinnacle of Eire Well being Service Government (HSE) stated this week. The HSE has additionally reached an settlement to take over non-public hospital ICU beds for Covid-19 admissions.
