Government concern over COVID-19 trends in some counties outside Dublin

Concern has been expressed at the level of COVID-19 in a number of counties outside Dublin.

There have been 26 cases of COVID-19 reported in Offaly in the past week.

The most recent official breakdown of county figures dates to midnight on Saturday last, at which point there had been 694 total cases confirmed in Offaly.

That compares to 668 at midnight on Sunday, September 13.

At a briefing on Monday, Elizabeth Canavan, the assistant secretary at the Department of the Taoiseach, said that Offaly was showing “concerning trends”.

“While there has been a significant focus on Dublin, the counties of Louth, Waterford, Limerick, Kildare, Leitrim and Offaly are now showing concerning trends.”

“We are currently at Level 2 of the Framework nationally and we would like to either stay there or improve to Level 1, as opposed to going backwards," she said.

Her comments come as Green Party leader Eamon Ryan also highlighted Government concerns at the situation in counties outside Dublin.

He told RTE this morning: “I think the bigger concern is counties outside Dublin where this is some similar characteristics to what's happening in Dublin.”

At Monday night, the official statistics show that there were 188 confirmed cases reported up to midnight on Sunday, with no new deaths.

Of the 188 new cases, 76 are in Dublin, 25 in Cork, 21 in Donegal, 16 in Kildare, 13 in Galway, seven in Roscommon and Waterford, with the remaining 23 cases spread across 12 counties.

There has now been 33,121 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

There was no new death reported. There has now been a total of 1,792 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.