Covid-19 is now “absolutely rampant” in the community.

A further 1,754 new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed across Ireland in the past 24 hours, with 11 more people losing their lives to the disease.

CEO of the Health Service Executive Paul Reid warned that true case numbers are most likely getting close to 3,000 cases a day, revealing that positivity rates are at 22% with some centres reaching 50%.

Of the new cases, 296 are in Cork with 523 in Dublin, 180 in Galway, 104 in Mayo, 94 in Kerry and the remaining 557 cases spread across all other counties.

More than 500 people are currently battling the virus in hospitals, 47 in ICU.

‘Our health system will not continue to cope’

Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health said: “The most concerning trend at present is the rapidly increasing number of people being admitted to hospital – we are now admitting between 50 – 70 people a day to our hospital system. Unfortunately, we expect this to get worse before it gets better. Our health system will not continue to cope with this level of impact.

Dr Holohan said health worker have seen a significant increase in positive laboratory tests in recent days reflecting a true increase in the incidence of the disease as well as the delay in people coming forward for testing over the Christmas period.

“As our systems catch up with these effects it places significant pressure on our reporting system,” he said.

“We have always understood that numbers of positive tests or confirmed cases would be a less reliable indicator over the Christmas period. This is typical of infectious disease reporting annually over the two weeks of Christmas and New Year.

“What is clear are the measures that the Government has now mandated and the behaviours that we as individuals need to observe. Everyone needs to stay at home other than for essential work or care.”

Worst case scenario

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Reid said the surge in cases amounted to a ‘worst-case scenario’ for Ireland.

“It is absolutely rampant in the community and we know that for a fact. Everyone is at extreme high risk now of contracting the virus,” Mr Reid said.

2021 will be brighter for sure. But firstly we need to get the spread of the virus back under control. Positivity rates yesterday at 22% with some centres reaching 50%. It’s quite rampant & high risk. But we can turn this around again. Let’s do it. @HSELive #COVID19

— Paul Reid (@paulreiddublin) January 1, 2021

More than 25,000 vulnerable people and healthcare workers will have been vaccinated by the end of the first week in January. According to the HSE, the vaccine will be offered to more priority groups as soon as possible.

In the meantime, health experts have pleaded with the public to focus on careful regular handwashing, social distancing and wearing face-coverings in public, while adhering to the 5km travel limit.

Pre-school programme postponed

The ECCE pre-school programme has been postponed and will now resume at a slightly later date of January 11th, 2021. The programme is delivered by over 4,000 services nationwide and provides two years of State-funded pre-school for all eligible children.

The decision will affect more than 100,000 children currently enrolled on the programme.

In a statement, Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman TD said that by postponing the return of these children to the pre-school programme, “social mixing will be reduced, which will help to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the post-Christmas period.”