Statement from the National Public Health Emergency Team - Thursday 16 December

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 4,141 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

As of 8am today, 443 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of whom 108 are in ICU.

Following further data validation, the total number of Omicron cases confirmed through whole genome sequencing in Ireland to date has been revised down to 39 confirmed cases.

Day to day variation in the reported number of cases of COVID-19 does not impact on key trend analysis. Analysing over a longer time period such as a week or 14 days, smooths out any variations introduced by processing times, and provides a more stable picture of the trend.

The number of notifications on CIDR will differ from other HSE data sources, such as positive SARS-CoV-2 results uploaded to the COVID Care Tracker, for several reasons including:

• deduplication of repeat positive tests in the same person
• differing upload schedules by the laboratories to CCT and CIDR – uploading of positive records on CIDR by laboratories is a more manual process than uploading to CCT. Uploading to CIDR typically occurs on the day or within one day of authorisation of the laboratory test result
• the time required for the two-step method of processing notifications on CIDR - this typically occurs either on the day or within one day of laboratories uploading positive records on CIDR

Statistics on booster vaccinations are now available on the COVID-19 data hub.