There has been a considerable drop in the number of people in hospital with Covid as positive cases also decrease.
The Department of Health has reported 3,692 new cases of Covid-19, with another 4,347 people registering a positive antigen test.
A total of 885 people with Covid-19 in hospital, up 40 on yesterday.
However, there are now 76 people in ICU, of whom 76 are in ICU, the lowest number of people with Covid-19 in critical care in just over 11 weeks.
It comes as the Health Service Executive’s Chief Operations Officer Anne O’Connor said high numbers of people are presenting at emergency departments with Covid-19.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Ms O’Connor said Covid-19 “hasn’t gone away” from a health service perspective.
“Notwithstanding the good news, in terms of people being out and about and being able to live their lives a bit more now, we still have 885 people in hospital today with Covid, so it hasn’t gone away from a health service perspective, although it is a reduced figure to where we would have been a few weeks ago.”
Ms O’Connor said the level of unscheduled care in hospitals remains “very, very high”.
“We can’t ignore the fact that we still have Covid in our hospitals, and we still have very high numbers of people coming to our emergency departments. So even today, we’re very, very high. We’re as high now as we were in the bad flu season two years ago in terms of our unscheduled care.”
She added that over 8,000 health service staff remain out of work due to Covid and said virus has also had a “significant impact” on waiting lists.
