There has been a further 1,754 Covid cases reported across Ireland today with a further 11 deaths.
Of these cases, a total of 44 were reported in Donegal.
The HSE has also warned that up to 9,000 cases are to be reported in the coming days.
The death toll from the virus now stands at 2,248 with a total of 93,532 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
Professor Philip Nolan from the National Public Health Emergency team confirmed a large volume of cases is due to be recorded in the coming days.
He said “A very large volume of positive tests in recent days means there is a delay in formal reporting. In excess of 9,000 additional new cases will be reported over the coming days.
“The reporting delay does not affect case management or contact tracing or our overall monitoring and modelling of the pandemic.”
Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, 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.
“We have also 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.
“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.”
Northern Ireland is not updating its Covid-19 figures again until tomorrow but the deaths of 11 people were confirmed yesterday along with 1,929 new infections.
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