Key Findings:
Table A: Weekly Profile of COVID-19 1,2,3,4 | ||||||||||||
2021 | ||||||||||||
01/01 | 08/01 | 15/01 | 22/01 | 29/01 | 05/02 | 12/02 | 19/02 | 26/02 | 05/03 | 12/03 | 19/03 | |
Total Cases | 36,020 | 29,945 | 18,815 | 10,814 | 8,225 | 6,647 | 5,625 | 5,131 | 4,264 | 3,308 | 3,505 | 3,174 |
% over 65 | 10% | 11% | 16% | 16% | 18% | 15% | 11% | 11% | 10% | 8% | 8% | 9% |
% asymptomatic | 10% | 11% | 15% | 18% | 17% | 22% | 24% | 25% | 24% | 26% | 25% | 24% |
Number in hospital at week end | 508 | 1,153 | 1,846 | 1,969 | 1,552 | 1,258 | 959 | 754 | 574 | 426 | 344 | 336 |
Number in ICU at week end | 50 | 107 | 187 | 218 | 213 | 181 | 173 | 153 | 136 | 100 | 86 | 87 |
Total confirmed COVID-19 deaths | 68 | 114 | 315 | 407 | 410 | 344 | 244 | 171 | 116 | 59 | 44 | 38 |
* latest week is preliminary | ||||||||||||
1 Table includes data as of 24th March 2021 for events created on CIDR (Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting) up to midnight Friday 19th March 2021 and https://covid-19.geohive.ie/ and is subject to revision | ||||||||||||
2 Cases data are defined by epidemiological date which is the earliest of onset date, date of diagnosis, laboratory specimen collection date, laboratory received date, laboratory reported date and event creation/notification date. Deaths data are defined by date of death | ||||||||||||
3 Hospitalisation numbers include those admitted to hospital due to COVID-19 and those whose contracted COVID-19 while in hospital | ||||||||||||
4 Deaths include those who died of COVID-19 and those who died with COVID-19 |
This is the twenty-seventh publication in our series of information bulletins produced by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), that aim to provide insights into those who have either died from or contracted COVID-19, by using data from the Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting (CIDR) provided to the CSO by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre and data from the HSE’s Swiftcare (A2i) and COVID Care Tracker (CCT) systems. This Bulletin covers the period from 28 February 2020 to 19 March 2021.
Deaths
For the week ending 19 March, 38 deaths were recorded among confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Throughout the pandemic, most deaths have occurred in the older age groups. In the week ending 19 March 2021, 87% of deaths were in people aged 65 years and over.
There were 14 deaths in Dublin in the week ending 19 March. No other counties recorded more than five deaths in the week.
Week ending 18 December 2020 | |
0-14 years | 12 |
15-24 years | 15 |
25-44 years | 33 |
45-64 years | 28 |
65-79 years | 8 |
80 years and over | 4 |
Week ending 19 March 2021 | |
0-14 years | 26 |
15-24 years | 14 |
25-44 years | 35 |
45-64 years | 17 |
65-79 years | 6 |
80 years and over | 2 |
Confirmed Cases
For the week ending 19 March, the number of weekly cases was 3,174, a decrease of 9% from the previous week.
Those aged 25-44 made up 35% of confirmed cases in the week ending 19 March with those aged 65 and over making up 8%.
There were 88 health care workers diagnosed in the week ending 19 March, this is the lowest weekly figure since the week ending 21 August 2020.
Dublin accounted for under a half (1,369) of all new cases for the week ending 19 March and it was the eleventh week in a row that weekly cases in Dublin have fallen. Meath was the county with the second highest number of new cases (190) for the week ending 19 March.
This is the fifth week in a row that Leitrim has recorded less than 25 new cases, the second week in a row that Kilkenny and Monaghan have recorded less than 25 new cases and the first such week for Mayo and Clare.
Figure 2 shows how although the number of new cases has fallen nationally by 9%, this varies across counties from a 65% decrease in Mayo to a 63% increase in Laois.
% change | |
Carlow | 3 |
Cavan | 44 |
Clare | -31 |
Cork | -38 |
Donegal | -1 |
Dublin | -2 |
Galway | -4 |
Kerry | -18 |
Kildare | -48 |
Kilkenny | -6 |
Laois | 63 |
Leitrim | 0 |
Limerick | -38 |
Longford | -28 |
Louth | -16 |
Mayo | -65 |
Meath | -10 |
Monaghan | -56 |
Offaly | -15 |
Roscommon | 29 |
Sligo | 0 |
Tipperary | 20 |
Waterford | 30 |
Westmeath | 7 |
Wexford | 29 |
Wicklow | -13 |
Hospitalisations
Hospitalisations have been decreasing since the peak of 1,386 in the week ending 15 January and to 163 hospitalisations in the week ending 19 March. ICU admissions have also decreased from the peak of 137 in the week ending 08 January to eight in the week ending 19 March.
County | Average Contacts per County |
---|---|
Carlow | 1.8 |
Kerry | 2 |
Kilkenny | 2 |
Laois | 2 |
Monaghan | 2 |
Mayo | 2.1 |
Cork | 2.2 |
Westmeath | 2.3 |
Clare | 2.4 |
Leitrim | 2.4 |
Louth | 2.4 |
Sligo | 2.4 |
Wexford | 2.4 |
All Counties | 2.5 |
Cavan | 2.5 |
Longford | 2.5 |
Waterford | 2.5 |
Wicklow | 2.5 |
Donegal | 2.7 |
Kildare | 2.7 |
Limerick | 2.7 |
Tipperary | 2.7 |
Meath | 2.8 |
Roscommon | 2.8 |
Galway | 3.1 |
Offaly | 3.4 |
Dublin | 3.8 |
Contacts
The average number of contacts per positive case per week was three in the week ending 19 March, down from five contacts per case in the week ending 01 January. This implies details of more than 9,000 close contacts were recorded in the week.
From Figure 3, the range of close contacts can be seen per county, from an average of two contacts per case in Carlow to almost four per case in Dublin.
Outbreaks
Public Health report outbreaks to HPSC and link cases to these outbreaks. This process is taking longer with the recent surge in case numbers. Public Health are prioritising the reporting of outbreaks in key settings e.g. RCFs, hospitals. Therefore, the number of private house outbreaks is underestimated. Similarly, while every effort is being made to link cases to outbreaks as quickly as possible, there can sometimes be a delay in linking cases to the outbreak.
From Table 7 it can be seen that in the last four weeks 4,618 cases have been linked to an outbreak and of these 256 (6%) were in nursing homes, 216 (5%) were in hospital or a community hospital/long-stay unit and 400 (9%) were in residential institutions.
There were 1,533 cases (33%) linked to an outbreak in private houses and 661 cases (14%) linked to an outbreak in the workplace in the last four weeks. The under 24 age group made up 30% of all cases linked to an outbreak over this period.
Referrals and Testing
There were 68,836 referrals for community testing where a valid reservation was recorded in the week ending 19 March. Referrals for testing increased in the last week and there was an increase of 60%, from 6,818 to 10,847, in referrals among the 0 – 14 age group. Some 50% of referrals were from GPs in the week ending 19 March. Analysis on referral speciality type shows that general contact testing / at risk groups has fallen by 1,220 and healthcare / essential worker testing has increased by 3,208 in the week ending 19 March.
Weekly testing numbers from HSE labs and hospitals show there were 93,976 tests completed in the week ending 19 March. The positivity rate in the week ending 19 March was 3.9%, up from 3.7% the previous week.
0 - 14 years | 15 - 24 years | 25 - 44 years | 45-64 years | 65-79 years | 80 years and over | |
01/01 | 16217 | 23763 | 50267 | 37494 | 9377 | 5421 |
08/01 | 9633 | 23013 | 58697 | 43166 | 9487 | 6815 |
15/01 | 7114 | 16645 | 54005 | 43035 | 8467 | 7375 |
22/01 | 6147 | 13245 | 48856 | 41611 | 7794 | 6430 |
29/01 | 4697 | 10730 | 39141 | 31951 | 6122 | 5691 |
05/02 | 5144 | 10350 | 34880 | 28893 | 5379 | 4291 |
12/02 | 5688 | 11245 | 32525 | 25246 | 4702 | 3460 |
19/02 | 4752 | 10635 | 32725 | 25733 | 4468 | 3179 |
26/02 | 5283 | 11413 | 28866 | 22709 | 4047 | 2456 |
05/03 | 5346 | 9025 | 26346 | 21740 | 3508 | 1716 |
12/03 | 6818 | 9595 | 25655 | 18480 | 3113 | 1575 |
19/03 | 10847 | 8462 | 25877 | 19563 | 3068 | 1019 |
Industry of Employment
In Table B the CSO has used Revenue PAYE Modernisation system data to provide insight on employment status of COVID-19 cases. Using pseudonymised keys over 80% of CIDR cases could be linked to administrative data sources, of these approximately 50% had a record of employment. As well as the strict legal protections set out in the Statistics Act, 1993, and other existing regulations, we are committed to protecting individual privacy and all identifiable information from each of the data sources used in our analysis, such as name, date of birth and addresses, are removed before use and only anonymised statistical aggregates are produced.
By matching the month the COVID-19 case is reported a record of employment in that month (or most recently available record of employment, currently January for cases reported in February and March) the results attempt to reflect the industry of an employee when they became a positive case in the CIDR system However, this does not indicate that the case is linked to an outbreak in the workplace.
From the table B it can be seen that 14% of reported cases with a record of employment in the week ending 20 March were employed in the Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles sector. The Human health and social work activities and Public administration and defence; compulsory social security sectors combined now account for 20% of cases, down from 38% in the week ending 30 January.
Table B: COVID-19 cases with Employment Information | |||||||||||||||||
2020 | 2021 | ||||||||||||||||
05/12 | 12/12 | 19/12 | 26/12 | 02/01 | 09/01 | 16/01 | 23/01 | 30/01 | 06/02 | 13/02 | 20/02 | 27/02 | 06/03 | 13/03 | 20/03 | ||
Sector | |||||||||||||||||
Agriculture, forestry & fishing (A) | 12 | 8 | 18 | 25 | 105 | 182 | 115 | 71 | 37 | 62 | 23 | 25 | 18 | 14 | .. | 8 | |
Industry (B-E) | 84 | 90 | 140 | 258 | 755 | 2,206 | 1,161 | 729 | 398 | 317 | 244 | 239 | 190 | 160 | 159 | 148 | |
Construction (F) | 29 | 33 | 82 | 151 | 451 | 1,209 | 549 | 304 | 151 | 156 | 133 | 108 | 98 | 101 | 74 | 87 | |
Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (G) | 125 | 93 | 194 | 422 | 1,162 | 3,558 | 1,599 | 858 | 485 | 438 | 384 | 381 | 288 | 230 | 197 | 219 | |
Transportation and storage (H) | 17 | 24 | 56 | 100 | 240 | 847 | 397 | 226 | 136 | 152 | 103 | 82 | 70 | 59 | 49 | 50 | |
Accommodation and food service activities (I) | 43 | 31 | 99 | 265 | 590 | 1,113 | 471 | 228 | 152 | 134 | 134 | 148 | 78 | 89 | 83 | 71 | |
Information and communication (J) | 10 | 17 | 50 | 110 | 262 | 832 | 293 | 166 | 75 | 66 | 56 | 51 | 50 | 35 | 38 | 44 | |
Financial, insurance and real estate activities (K-L) | 30 | 39 | 75 | 155 | 462 | 1,443 | 546 | 306 | 160 | 128 | 108 | 94 | 95 | 68 | 61 | 51 | |
Professional, scientific and technical activities (M) | 25 | 35 | 76 | 164 | 532 | 1,385 | 512 | 249 | 144 | 132 | 102 | 93 | 100 | 74 | 54 | 60 | |
Administrative and support service activities (N) | 39 | 37 | 77 | 153 | 359 | 1,171 | 635 | 423 | 224 | 207 | 167 | 149 | 132 | 110 | 118 | 80 | |
Public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O) | 136 | 114 | 173 | 325 | 1,025 | 2,839 | 1,938 | 1,068 | 477 | 290 | 219 | 159 | 133 | 87 | 89 | 112 | |
Education (P) | 48 | 48 | 106 | 253 | 671 | 1,687 | 627 | 296 | 156 | 126 | 99 | 87 | 81 | 71 | 75 | 81 | |
Human health and social work activities (Q) | 137 | 129 | 228 | 420 | 856 | 2,842 | 2,027 | 1,345 | 864 | 518 | 302 | 247 | 228 | 138 | 127 | 121 | |
Other nace activities (R-U) | 25 | 24 | 45 | 89 | 209 | 630 | 245 | 105 | 69 | 63 | 55 | 41 | 59 | 30 | 36 | 38 | |
Unknown | 7 | 11 | 18 | 29 | 94 | 294 | 146 | 111 | 46 | 47 | 30 | 28 | 21 | 27 | .. | 15 | |
Total | 767 | 733 | 1,437 | 2,919 | 7,773 | 22,238 | 11,261 | 6,485 | 3,574 | 2,836 | 2,159 | 1,932 | 1,641 | 1,293 | 1,179 | 1,185 | |
'..' Indicates a cell number < 5 or a cell number < 5 can be identified |
For further COVID-19 related information go to the CSO COVID-19 Information Hub
Full statistical tables can be downloaded here:
Table 2: COVID-19 Deaths and Cases Series 27 - Table 2-2A (XLS 36KB)
Table 3: COVID-19 Deaths and Cases Series 27 - Table 3-3A (XLS 46KB)
Table 4: COVID-19 Deaths and Cases Series 27 - Table 4-4A (XLS 48KB)
Table 6: COVID-19 Deaths and Cases Series 27 - Table 6-6A (XLS 26KB)
Table 7: COVID-19 Deaths and Cases Series 27 - Table 7-7A (XLS 61KB)
Table 9: COVID-19 Deaths and Cases Series 27 - Table 9. (XLS 20KB)