The Department of Health has confirmed 47 further deaths related to Covid-19 and an additional 901 new cases of the disease.
It said 44 of the deaths occurred in February, two occurred in January and one in December.
The median age of those who died was 81 years and the age range was 51-99.
It brings the total number of deaths to 4,082.
Today's cases involve 473 men and 422 women, with 65% under 45 years of age. The median age is 36.
In a regional breakdown of cases, 437 are in Dublin, 49 in Limerick, 43 in Galway, 39 in Kildare, 32 in Meath.
The other 301 cases are spread across all other counties.
As of 8am this morning, 771 Covid patients were in hospital, of which 151 are in ICU. There has been 48 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.
Speaking at the National Public Health Emergency Team's briefing, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer said there was "simply no headroom" for any return to normality right now.
Dr Ronan Glynn said the the public needed to keep up the basic public health measures. He said they remain very concerned about the high level of disease.
'The ultimate and the strongest tool that we have is people's buy-in and people's willingness to protect themselves and their families at an individual level. If we lose that, nothing else will work,' Deputy CMO Dr @ronan_glynn says | https://t.co/co6xNmheQO pic.twitter.com/gQAnAXNeRv
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 18, 2021
In relation to schools, Dr Glynn said the key message was that the return to school should not signal a return to normality.
He said school return would be on a phased basis and would be monitored, but should not mean more mixing of people.
The Chair of NPHET's Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group said progress has continued in suppression of the disease but the rate that cases are declining has slowed down.
Professor Philip Nolan said this is due to the spread of the B117 variant, which was first detected in the UK.
Prof Philip Nolan says progress is still being made in the suppression of Covid, however the rate over the number of cases decreasing per day has slowed down. He says it is "almost certainly" because 90% of transmissions are due to the B117 variant | https://t.co/hVyWwAavS9 pic.twitter.com/u6IHQLavNO
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 18, 2021
Prof Nolan said we have been at a positivity rate of 6% for the past ten days and this rate seems to have plateaued.
He said there was a very rapid decline in case numbers at the beginning of the third wave, but he said "we're seeing a slower decline in case numbers" over the past 14 days.
Despite the rate of decline slowing, he said significant improvements were being seen across most age groups, particularly in the older cohorts.
However, he said, there has been an increase in the rate of disease in the 19-24 age group, some of which is due to the level of asymptomatic testing and some is due to increased social mixing.
Professor Nolan said another point of concern was that the rate of people being hospitalised had also plateaued at about 50 new admissions per day.
He said the number of people in ICU is coming down, but more slowly, but that was to be expected.
Prof Philip Nolan says the number of people being admitted to hospital per day has plateaued at around 50 new cases per day, which is a cause for concern | https://t.co/hVyWwAavS9 pic.twitter.com/S7S1nuUwJx
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 18, 2021
Prof Nolan said the estimated reproduction number is between 0.65 and 0.85. He added that the new variant is inflating the reproduction number by between 30% and 60%.
He said to get the reproduction number to 0.75 people have to work as hard as they did last year to get it down to 0.4 because of the new variant. He said nine out ten new cases are the new variant.
Prof Nolan said if we can keep the reproduction rate of between 0.7 and 0.9 in the coming weeks we will expect to see 400-500 cases by 1 March and 200-350 cases a day by mid March.
He said we have to continue to work as hard as we are and that we do not relax in terms of taking caution in order to keep the disease levels down.
On the rising proportion of #Covid19 cases in Dublin, Prof Philip Nolan says it's not unusual the disease remains at higher levels in urban areas as it recedes across the country as a whole. It's not just Dublin; rates are higher in other urban areas too | https://t.co/co6xNmheQO pic.twitter.com/ifN3Fivy6r
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 18, 2021
There has been a total of 515 deaths in February.
Prof Nolan said there had been a decrease in the number of new deaths reported each day, in comparison to three weeks ago.
He said he believes we are past the peak of mortality for this wave, but there is concern around late reporting of deaths.
Prof Nolan said they had seen a slight upward drift in the number of close contacts per confirmed case, at around 2.4, where it had been 2.1. However, he said it is close to being a "flat line".
In relation to nursing homes, Dr Glynn said a group has been tasked to look at this in the next fortnight considering things like the international experience and vaccine uptake.
But he warned they do not expect to see the full benefit of vaccinations in these facilities for at least the next couple of weeks.
The Department of Health said that as of 15 February, 280,581 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in Ireland.
It said 182,193 people have received their first dose, with 98,388 people receiving their second dose.
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