Weigh the risks before you socialise.

That’s the advice from Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan as we begin the second last week before Christmas, after 429 new cases of Covid-19 and one additional death were announced last night.

“I am concerned that we are seeing the incidence of COVID-19 rising again,” said Dr Holohan.

“429 is a large number of cases by the standard of recent weeks and the five-day moving average has now increased above 300 per day.”

“Our efforts in Level 5 in recent weeks brought the 14-day incidence rate down to 78 per 100,000 population, put us in a position of having the lowest disease incidence in Europe and ultimately protected many people and saved many lives.”

A total of 20 of the new cases were in Cork, with 122 in Dublin, 46 in Donegal, 30 in Limerick and 22 in Laois. The remaining 189 cases are spread across all other counties.

“Take today’s figures as a sign that we all must now reduce our social contacts, limit our interactions with those outside our households, weigh the risks of what socialising we are planning over the next two weeks so that we can all have as safe a Christmas as possible,” added Dr Holohan.