Ten people with Covid-19 have died & 613 new cases have been confirmed, 12 of them in Carlow & Kilkenny
A health expert's calling for new restrictions to be in place in a few days

Ten people with the Coronavirus have died and 613 more have tested positive, 12 of them locally.
The latest daily figures from the National Public Health Emergency Team have again broken all records since April.
Of the most recent incidences more men than women were affected with two thirds of them aged under 45 years. 30% are confirmed to be associated with outbreaks or are close contacts of a confirmed case with 58 cases identified as community transmission.
There are 224 in Dublin, 58 in Donegal, 46 in Cork, 44 in Kildare, 31 in Limerick, 28 in Laois, and 21 in Kerry.
There were cases in all other counties, with more than a dozen each in Galway, Clare, Meath, Louth and Monaghan.
Carlow’s figures have risen by seven to 299 while there are five new cases in Kilkenny meaning a total of 477 in the county to midnight Friday.
Among our near neighbours there were nine each in Tipperary & Wicklow with a further five in Wexford.
37,668 people are now known to have contracted the virus, and 1,810 people have died.
Anthony Staines, Professor of health systems at DCU, says new restrictions need to be in place by the middle of next week “My thought is that the whole country should be on significant restrictions, we should be doing is using local skills, local knowledge, local figures to release those restrictions over the next while where that’s safe to do so, but unless we do this at county level but across the whole country we’re not going to bring this under control”.
Acting Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ronan Glynn says “The numbers being reported today and over the past week represent a significant escalation in the profile of Covid-19 in Ireland”.
He adds “For those aged 70+ and those who are medically vulnerable to Covid-19, it is strongly recommended that you should limit the number of people you meet to a very small core group of family members, carers or friends, for short periods of time, while remaining physically distant”.
In conclusion, Dr Glynn notes “We need to work together once again to make a significant impact on the number of cases in the community, and ultimately to reduce the number of people getting sick, being admitted to hospital and critical care, while protecting non-Covid healthcare services. I urge people in every county to follow the public health advice to stop the further spread of Covid-19.”
See how Carlow & Kilkenny are faring – click on the map for more: