Public health officials are doubtful that the numbers surrounding Covid-19 will fall any further this side of Christmas.
It comes as the Taoiseach Micheál Martin said this evening the situation is one being kept under “constant review,” as new cases hover around the 300 mark each day.
Speaking separately on Monday, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Tony Holohan said the Republic’s 7-day incidence rate of the disease is now “ticking upwards”.
“It’s increased by 13 per cent in the last week, so our seven-day instance is ticking upwards even while our 14-day instance is still ticking downwards as it were,” he said.
“But in both cases, seven-day and 14-day, we have the lowest instance in Europe as things stand at the moment.”
The 14-day incidence rate of the virus per 100,000 people is now 80.4, down from 89.2 on Monday last week.
Dr Holohan said public health officials believe the country’s daily case numbers have already passed their lowest point, as 242 new cases were confirmed this evening.
“We seem to be bottoming out at something above 250, the five-day average now is just under 290 cases so we’re bottoming out as it were,” he said.
“We think we’ve passed the low point at quite a high level and a much higher level than we would like.”
Review
Meanwhile, the Taoiseach said this evening it was not “tenable” to suggest the country could have been further reopened following the lift of Level 5 restrictions at the beginning of December.
“We can see numbers are still in or around the 300 mark, so the situation from a Covid point of view is one that we have to keep under constant review,” he said.
“The idea that, you know, that you could open up everything is simply not tenable, but I think we’ve got the balance right.”
Dr Holohan said this Christmas was “not the time” for international travel ahead of the rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine.
“Now is not the time, we have good reason to be hopeful about the position we find ourselves in,” he said.
“We as a country have been able to bring the virus down to levels of transmission much lower than other countries in Europe.
Vaccine rollout
“We have a number of vaccines now and active preparations for the introduction of those vaccines happening, over the course of the coming weeks and months we’ll see those being elaborated and hopefully significant numbers of people being vaccinated into 2021," Dr Holohan said.
“If we can manage to keep things under control, we can prevent a surge in infection that will lead to hospitalisations, it will lead to admissions to intensive care and may well lead to the deaths of people whose lives could be protected.”
Asked about the future rollout of vaccines, Dr Holohan said the first authorisation by the European Medicines Agency of a vaccine is not anticipated before December 29th.
“Other authorisations are unlikely to happen in 2020,” he said.
“Our expectation is that supplies of vaccines might follow in short order after authorisation at a European level to the individual member states, of which we’ll be one.
“Our intentions are to have plans in place to enable those vaccines to be given to people pretty much as soon as they arrive.”
Dr Holohan said vaccines would be given to the public in a “prioritised way”.
No further Covid-19 related deaths were reported in Ireland on Monday, leaving the national toll at 2,099.
