A new surge of Covid-19 infections could be just weeks away according to the World Health Organisation.
The WHO special envoy on Covid-19, Dr David Nabarro believes hospitalisations and serious illness will surge over the coming weeks.
“We’ve actually been going down in terms of numbers around the world for the last four to six weeks,” Dr Nabarro said.
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“I think it will pick up again in about another four to six weeks and there’ll be another surge. There will be a surge in Ireland as well as in the British isles, and that may lead to quite a lot of illness in hospitals again.”
According to Dr Navarro, new surges in infections will appear every three months.
The number of people to have died of Covid-19 in Ireland surpassed 7,000 with a further 2,837 new cases were reported yesterday.
1,236 were reported through a positive PCR test while a further 1,601 positive antigen tests were reported on the HSE portal.
While deaths may have surpassed 7,000, hospital numbers continue to fall.
In the last 24 hours, 37 people were admitted to hospital and 51 were discharged. 1 patient was admitted to ICU and 5 discharged for a total of 435 confirmed Covid-19 cases in hospital.
Testing is currently underway in America for what's being called a "moon shot".
And according to Professor Luke O'Neill, positive results from the phase one trial on humans are expected in the coming days.
He said on Newstalk on Thursday: "This is now the 'moon shot', they're calling it in a way, the US are all over this.
"Can we make a vaccine that will work against any variant of Covid-19? And indeed any in animals that might jump again in the next pandemic.
"There's a massive effort happening in the US at the moment, trying to make what's called a Universal Vaccine.
"It's a great goal to have".
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