“Take today’s figures as a sign that we all must now reduce our social contacts."

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has reported that one more person with Covid-19 has died in Ireland. The HPSC was also notified of a further 429 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland. 122 of the cases are in Dublin, 46 in Donegal, 30 in Limerick, 22 in Laois, 20 in Cork and the remaining 189 cases are spread across all other counties. As of 2pm on Sunday, 193 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 31 are in Intensive Care Units. There have 13 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours. Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, said: “Today, I am concerned that we are seeing the incidence of Covid-19 rising again. 429 is a large number of cases by the standard of recent weeks and the five day moving average has now increased above 300 per day. “Our efforts in Level 5 in recent weeks brought the 14-day incidence rate down to 78 per 100,000 population, put us in a position of having the lowest disease incidence in Europe and ultimately protected many people and saved many lives. “Take today’s figures as a sign that we all must now reduce our social contacts, limit our interactions with those outside our households, weigh the risks of what socialising we are planning over the next two weeks, so that we can all have as safe a Christmas as possible.”