New data from the Health Services Executive shows the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, outbreak-related hospitals and residential disability centres since the start of the pandemic.
Of the 8,545 COVID-19 deaths in Ireland, 2,323 or more than 27% occurred in care homes.
The data covers the period from March 2020 to mid-February this year.
In acute care hospitals, 12,582 confirmed cases are linked to outbreaks affecting patients or staff.
There were 1,126 deaths related to the hospital outbreak, involving patients or staff.
This figure breaks down to 1,121 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5 probable cases of COVID-19, reports RTE.
HSE-managed disabled residential centers have recorded 59 deaths from COVID-19.
The data was provided to ANTU leader Pedar Tóbin by the HSE’s Health Security Monitoring Center in response to a series of parliamentary questions.
The HSE said it cannot reliably identify sporadic cases who may have contracted Covid-19 in hospital and that its case figures refer to cases linked to hospital outbreaks.
They also said it was not possible to confirm that all cases linked to these hospital outbreaks were linked to Covid-19 while in the hospital, reports RTE.
Today, February 29, 2020, effectively marks the third anniversary of the first officially confirmed case of COVID-19 here.
Since then more than 1.7 million PCR-confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported.
The Department of Health said today that Ireland had the sixth lowest Covid-19 death rate per 100,000 population so far during the pandemic, based on the latest figures from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Drivetime he said: “Everybody was under a lot of pressure, the Government, the HSE, the Department of Health and they had to make a lot of rapid decisions which weren’t very popular amongst the public,” reports RTE.
However, he added that some mistakes had been made and that “sometimes our Government, the Department of Health and the HSE were slow to react to some emerging scientific evidence”, such as mask wearing and antigen testing, reports RTE.
Asked whether he thought a total lockdown during some parts of the pandemic was inappropriate, Professor Mills said: “You have to put yourself back in the position that you were in then rather than looking at it from now because it’s very easy now to say ‘what was the right thing to do’ because you have a lot more information than you had then,” reports RTE.
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