The world’s death toll from Covid-19 has reached one million.
The US accounts for a fifth of all deaths, followed by Brazil and India.
Over 36,000 people lost their lives from the virus last week – with over half of them in the Americas.
More than 33 million people have been infected with coronavirus since the pandemic began.
Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, says it’s helping to provide new rapid tests for some states noting “120,000,000 will be made available to lower & middle income countries, these tests provide reliable results in approximately 15 to 30 minutes rather than hours or days at a lower price with less sophisticated equipment”.
Back home and Ireland’s Acting Chief Medical Officer has raised concerns over “fast increasing” trends of coronavirus in a number of counties.
One of them is Cork, where a fifth of cases in the past two weeks have been linked to pubs and restaurants.
While in Galway, there’s been a large cluster following a house party attended by young people.
390 new cases of Covid 19 were confirmed last night and no further deaths. We’ve no indication as of yet if any of the new cases are in Carlow or Kilkenny but if they are it’s four or less in each county.
Acting CMO Ronan Glynn says there are some areas they’re keeping a close eye on saying “Unfortunately we’re seeing particularly fast increasing incidence in a number of counties, I want to highlight Cork & Galway which we have been doing for about a week but now also Monaghan & Roscommon, because their overall population sizes are lower their incidences can rise very quickly with a relatively small number of cases but that said they do stand out for the sped with which the situation there is deteriorating”.
The Restaurants Association of Ireland has accused the chief medical officer of ‘tarnishing’ the industry with one ‘sweeping statement.’
The RAI’s Chief Executive is calling for more information about where cases linked to restaurants in Cork have arisen.
Adrian Cummins says the whole sector shouldn’t be blamed for this commenting “It warrants further, exact information from the comments that was being made by the Chief Medical Officer, you cannot tarnish an entire industry with a broad sweeping statement like that”.
He adds “We’re in a phase of living with Covid as the Taoiseach said and by tarnishing an entire industry with a broad statement I think that our industry would like to see the actual data, really to see the actual locations of this, these cases & where the infection is sourced”.
Meanwhile, the number of people in receipt of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment has increased by 10,801 in the past week.
It currently stands at 217,142, with just under €62,000,000 to be paid out today.
More than 19,000 people have applied for the payment in the last seven days, after Covid restrictions were strengthened in Donegal and before that Dublin.
There are 15 more in Kilkenny bringing the current county total to 2,941 however Carlow’s figure dropped by six to 2,182.
Over 8,600 people have closed their claims in the past week, with 6,309 reporting they were going back to work. Of these 107 are in Kilkenny & 76 in Carlow.
Meanwhile the number of people medically certified for receipt of Enhanced Illness Benefit this morning is 1,370 in Kilkenny & 958 in Carlow.
