There was a sharp increase in the number of Covid-19 outbreaks in hospitals and nursing homes over the Christmas and New Year period as infections in the community soared, new figures show.
A total of 23 outbreaks in hospitals were reported in the week to January 2nd, an increase of 14 on the previous week, and 22 outbreaks were recorded in nursing homes, an increase of 10.
This is the first week in the past six that hospital outbreaks have reached double figures.
There are still 76 outbreaks in hospitals and 64 in nursing homes that remain open. There must be no new positive Covid-19 case for 28 days for an outbreak to be declared closed.
An outbreak or cluster is defined as two or more laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases. Overall, there have been 141 outbreaks recorded in hospitals and 135 in nursing homes since the start of the second wave of the pandemic, Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) data shows.
There was a continued decline in the number outbreaks in private households with 40 being recorded in the week to January 2nd, a reduction of 61 on the previous week. The number of outbreaks in private households had been falling over the previous three weeks.
Schools
Despite schools being on leave, there were 11 outbreaks associated with school children or staff reported by the HPSC in the week to January 2nd - down from 21 the previous week. This was the lowest number in seven weeks.
There were 15 confirmed cases linked to the most recent school outbreaks. Overall, there have been 1,234 cases linked to school outbreaks since August, of which eight people were hospitalised.
There were seven outbreaks linked to restaurants, an increase of three from the previous week, and three linked to pubs, an increase of two from the previous week.
Overall, there were 154 new outbreaks reported in the week to January 2nd, a decline of 59 on the previous week.
Household infections account for the vast majority of outbreaks reported since the start of the second wave of the pandemic, amounting to 6,179 out of a total of 8,496 outbreaks reported.
Out of 145 outbreaks in nursing homes and community hospitals or long-stay residential units notified since the summer, 71 of these outbreaks remain open.
ICUs
There were 101 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases in hospital outbreaks during the week ending January 2nd, bringing total cases in these outbreaks to 1,717, of which 35 ended up in ICUs.
There were 135 deaths linked to these hospital outbreaks.
There were 65 new laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases in nursing home outbreaks reported in the week to January 2nd, bringing the total nursing home cases to 2,126 since the summer.
Some 116 of these were hospitalised and there were 160 deaths linked to these outbreaks.
Among vulnerable populations, there was one new outbreak notified in the Traveller community and one new outbreak in a direct provision centre.
