63 additional COVID-19 related deaths reported

There have been over 650 new cases of COVID-19 in each of Westmeath and Roscommon in the last fortnight.

Most recent figures from the Department of Health show there were 51 new cases reported on Tuesday in Westmeath and 27 in Roscommon.

This bring the total cases in Westmeath from December 30 to midnight Tuesday, January 12, to 672 and in Roscommon to 655.

With a lower population, Roscommon has a higher 14-day incidence rate of 1,014.8 cases per 100,000, which is the seventh lowest of the 26 counties in the State.

Westmeath has the third lowest rate over the same fortnight at 757 cases per 100,000 population.

Nationally, on Tuesday, there were 63 additional deaths related to COVID-19 notified.

Five of these deaths occurred in November 2020, one in December 2020, and the remaining 56 this month. The date of death for one reported death remains under investigation.

There has been a total of 2,460 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.

As of midnight, Tuesday 12th January, 3,569 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been notified bringing the total to 159,144 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

Of these 1,119 are in Dublin, 416 in Cork, 200 in Galway, 182 in Louth, 169 in Waterford, and the remaining 1,483 cases are spread across all other counties, including the 66 in Offaly.

As of 2pm today, 1,770 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 172 are in ICU. 133 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health said: “We are seeing some early signs of progress with daily cases numbers and positivity rates. We can take some hope in them, but we have a long, long way to go. In the coming weeks ahead, we will need to draw upon our reserves of resilience from springtime as we can expect to see hospitalisations, admissions to ICU and mortality related to COVID-19 increase day on day.”