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16th May 2021

802 new cases of Covid-19 reported over two days

Clara Kelly

The daily figures weren’t available yesterday due to a cyber attack.

The Department of Health has reported a total of 802 cases of Covid-19 in the last two days.

There were 447 cases reported up to midnight on Friday 14 May, and a further 355 cases reported up to midnight on Saturday 15 May, the Department said in a statement on Sunday.

There are 109 people with Covid-19 being treated in hospitals around the country. 42 of these hospitalisations are being treated in intensive care units.

The Department added that the figures provided may change due to future data validation.

On Saturday, the HSE said that daily Covid-19 figures were not available because of the disruption caused by a cyber attack on the HSE and Department of Health systems.

Early on Friday, the HSE announced it had temporarily shut down its IT system after it was targeted in a “significant ransomware attack”.

Described as possibly the most significant cybercrime attack on the Irish state by Minister of State for eGovernment Ossian Smyth, it has caused major disruptions to health services across the country.

A further cyber attack was carried out on the Department of Health after the ransomware attack on the Health Service Executive (HSE) earlier this week.

The Department has shut down its systems and is working to safely restore its data amid the attack and has been “working to respond” to the incident since Thursday.

A digital note from the cybercrime group believed to be responsible has been left on the Department’s IT systems.

The note is believed to be similar to the one discovered amid the HSE hack earlier this week.

The Department of Health confirmed that The National Cyber Security Centre, along with the gardaí and the Defence Forces, is currently investigating the attacks.

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