by The Chief Medical Officer has said that the country is in a serious phase of the latest surge of Covid-19 infections and that we are likely to see escalating mortality and hospital ICU admissions in the coming days and weeks.
Dr Tony Holohan was speaking after the latest figures showed a record 7,836 confirmed cases were reported yesterday.
Dr Holohan said it has never been more important, throughout our experience of the pandemic, to stay home and only meet people outside your household for essential purposes.
NPHET are becoming increasingly alarmed about the prospect that the health system may not be able to cope unless the trends are rapidly reversed.
To date, there have been a total of 121,154 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 2,299 coronavirus-related deaths in Ireland.
The number of people being treated for the virus in intensive care units is up 12 at 88.
In a statement, the National Public Health Emergency Team said that of the cases yesterday, 3,740 are men and 4,078 are women.
It said 63% are under the age of 45, while the median age is 36.
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Of the new cases, 2,263 are in Dublin, 1,373 in Cork, 496 in Louth, 345 are in Limerick, 340 in Meath and the remaining 3,019 cases are spread across all other counties.
31,000 cases of Covid-19 were notified to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre over the past seven days.
That is up from 8,000 cases last week and 5,000 the week before.
The 14-day incidence rate of the disease now stands at 819.1 per 100,000. On 6 December, this figure was 80.7 per 100,000.
The counties with the highest incidence rates are Monaghan (1,638.8), Louth (1,528.5) and Limerick (1,252.4). The counties with the lowest rates of infection are Wicklow (381.3), Tipperary (391.7) and Leitrim (477.5).
