"Our system is under increasing strain."

The number of people with Covid-19 in Irish hospitals has increased overnight with an additional 136 admissions since this time yesterday. On Saturday there were 1,285 Covid-19 patients in hospital, of which 107 were in intensive care units. However, HSE CEO Paul Reid said on Sunday morning this number had increased to 1,421 and the number of people in ICU had increased by 13. "There's now 1,421 people in hospital with #COVID19 (+136 today) & 120 in ICU," he said. "Our health system is under increasing strain. The best support we can all now give, is to avoid getting sick with Covid. This will help to get us out the other side of this." https://twitter.com/paulreiddublin/status/1348198322381717504 It marks the highest number of hospitalisations for Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic and ICU numbers continue to track towards the peak of the first wave. The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) yesterday reported an additional nine deaths from Covid-19 along with a further 4,842 new cases of the virus. The backlog of confirmed cases from the Christmas period has been cleared since last Thursday, the Department of Health said, but there can been a delay of up to 48 hours to process and report laboratory confirmed cases.