Statement from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre:

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 90 additional deaths related to COVID-19.

89* deaths occurred in January.

The median age of those who died is 83 years and the age range is 48-99 years.

There has been a total of 3,066** COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.

As of midnight, Monday 25^th January, the HPSC has been notified of 928 confirmed cases of COVID-19. There is now a total of 189,851 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

Of the cases notified today:

• 418 are men / 506 are women
• 50% are under 45 years of age
• The median age is 44 years old
• 257 in Dublin, 115 in Cork, 71 in Louth, 53 in Galway, 45 in Limerick and the remaining 387 cases are spread across all other counties***

As of 2pm today, 1,750 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 216 are in ICU. 65 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, said:

Today we are reporting a further 90 deaths, bringing our cumulative total of lives lost to COVID-19 to more than 3,000 in Ireland. This highly infectious disease is having a severe impact on the most vulnerable in our society and we must continue the good work we are doing to suppress it.

The decline in daily incidence of COVID-19 has begun, however the volume of disease in our communities remains very high. To date we have reported 96,000 cases in January 2021, which has already passed the total of 93,500 cases reported in 2020. Indeed, public health doctors in the Midlands reported a total of 4,000 cases in the first 8 months of 2020 and another 4,000 cases in the first four weeks of 2021.

Through our enhanced public health surveillance programme, we have identified 6 additional cases linked to the Southern African variant of concern. All cases are being followed up by public health teams in line with the latest ECDC guidance published on the 21^st January.

The downturn in incidence has been achieved through the determination of people across the country to stay at home, to work from home and to avoid meeting and socialising with others. It is imperative that everyone continues to strictly adhere to the public health advice to protect ourselves and our loved ones from this highly-infectious disease.

The COVID-19 Dashboard provides up-to-date information on the key indicators of COVID-19 in the community.

*There is one death where the date of death is under investigation.

**Validation of data at the HPSC has resulted in the denotification of 1 death. The figure of 3,066 deaths reflects this.

***County data should be considered provisional as the national Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting System (CIDR) is a dynamic system and case details are continually being validated and updated.

• 7 Day Incidence is 273.8
• 5-day moving average is 1,591

Today’s cases, 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 population and new cases in last 14 days (as of midnight 25 January 2021) (incidence rate based on Census 2016 county population)

The 5-day moving average of the number of new cases provides an appropriate indicator of current daily case numbers within a county. It takes account of any validation of cases for previous days and smooths out daily/weekend fluctuations in case numbers.

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