Irish officials blame Christmas revellers for Covid spike

A man walks by himself on Burrow beach in Dublin

Credit: Brian Lawless

Irish officials have blamed Christmas revellers for soaring rates of Covid-19 infections.

They said that festive gatherings, rather than the new more infectious Covid variant spreading from the UK, were the main reason behind the escalation in the virus’s presence.

Having previously had one of the lowest infection rates in the whole of the European Union, Ireland is now facing one of the fastest rates of deterioration, according to the country’s health chiefs.

Philip Nolan, the head of Ireland’s Covid-19 modelling group, said over the weekend that he believed the new variant represented between 5 per cent and 17 per cent of the current prevalence.

“Right now we believe the UK variant is here at a relatively low level, even with that small sample,” Mr Nolan told national broadcaster RTE. “We saw an even more intense level of socialisation and viral transmission over Christmas than we might have expected and that’s what’s leading us to the really precarious position we’re in now.”

Mr Nolan spoke out after the Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin, said last week that the new variant discovered in neighbouring Britain was spreading in Ireland at a rate that has surpassed the most pessimistic models available to the government.

Ireland’s top virologist, Cillian De Gascun, disclosed on Friday that laboratories had found 16 instances of the variant from a sample of 169 positive cases.

Mr Nolan said  that Ireland was set to report more than 3,000 cases daily over the weekend, Saturday, a near doubling of its daily record. He predicted a peak of up to 6,000 cases per day, due to a partly to a backlog of positive tests results.

Infections are also spreading rapidly across the open border from British-run Northern Ireland. Cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days have risen to 577 after the health authority reported another 3,576 cases over the past 48 hours.