The number of clusters of Covid-19 in nursing homes around the country has risen by 10 in just one day.
There are now a total of 50 outbreaks of the virus in nursing homes. Clusters in healthcare settings are increasing day by day.
There are now 37 clusters in hospitals (up 7 on the previous day), 18 in residential institutions (up 5 on the previous day) and 11 in community hospitals or long stay units (an increase of 5 on the previous day).
Overall, there are 206 clusters relating to 838 cases.
According to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, a cluster is three or more cases in an institution within a 72-hour period.
These latest figures were released by the HPSC and are based on 4,014 confirmed cases of the virus up until midnight on Thursday 2 April.
The number of healthcare workers with the virus has increased again to 1,084. This group of the population now accounts for 27% of all confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ireland.
Of these 4,014 recorded cases, there were 158 ICU admissions and 131 deaths.
Around 80% of cases of Covid-19 will be a mild to moderate illness, close to 14% have severe disease and around 6% are critical.
Generally, you need to be 15 minutes or more in the vicinity of an infected person, within 1-2 metres, to be considered at-risk or a close contact.
But there are higher risk settings, where transmission is possible in a shorter time interval, where health staff are dealing directly with known or suspected cases.
