The INMO has today called for the government to declare a National Emergency due to the hospital crisis, as they say the health service is not coping with the surge in the disease.
Speaking on Morning Ireland, the COO said there are 14 Irish hospitals with more than 50 Covid-19 cases and six with more than 100. She said Cork University Hospital, University Hospital Limerick and Galway University Hospital are the worst hit.
Ms O’Connor said in “ordinary circumstances” the close contacts of cases would be out for 14 days, but said “that is not available to us in that instance”.
“Clearly that is something we would use as a last resort… it has been used. Where people are close contacts of cases and asymptomatic, there is a process where they are monitored by occupational health and they can return to work. We have had to do that.
There was also a further 63 Covid-19 fatalities recorded.
Five of these deaths occurred in November 2020, one of these deaths occurred in December 2020, and the remaining 56 occurred in January 2021.
The date of death for one reported death remains under investigation.
This brings the total number of cases in the state to 159,144 and the total number of Covid-19 related deaths to 2,460.
Of the cases notified today:
1,616 are men / 1,924 are women
54pc are under 45 years of age
The median age is 42 years old
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.