12,500 cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in the South East in the past month.
Today’s HSE Regional Health Forum for the South today heard how that figure is “equal and above” the numbers seen last January.
Carlow is tops in the country (see here) and has logged 1,837 positive tests in the last four weeks alone, with Kilkenny seeing 2,545 during that time with a levelling off in the last week. Added to those were 3,167 in Waterford, 3,098 in Wexford and 2,072 in South Tipperary.
HSE Director of Public Health in the South East Dr Carmel Mullaney told those linked into this afternoon’s online gathering that we’re experiencing a “very serious ongoing fourth wave of Covid still” with the only difference being the translation to hospital and deaths.
62 people with the virus in the region died in the first wave with 29 in the second (between August and the end of November 2020). The largest number was in the third wave, after Christmas and into March 2021, when more than 360 people lost their lives, while there have been 46 fatalities in the current fourth wave to date, since June.
In terms of case fatality rates though, almost 6% of the region’s Wave 1 cases died compared to 0.16% in Wave 4 so far, demonstrating the impact of vaccination but other criteria also need to be considered too eg lack of availability of early testing, the number of cases recorded and so on.
Meanwhile, 434,314 tests have been carried out with 72,000 in the South East in November 2021 alone.
