The number of people receiving treatment for Covid-19 in hospitals across Ireland has dropped to the lowest rate since early March.
That’s according to the latest HSE figures that potentially show the latest surge beginning to wind down.
There were 705 patients in hospitals on Wednesday, and of these, 42 were in intensive care units, which is similar to the numbers seen in mid-March.
Hospitals are still under pressure despite the decrease in demand, but there is hope that as the summer approaches, numbers will fall again as there will be less chance of transmission with people meeting outdoors.
However, thousands of people in Ireland are more exposed to the latest strain of Covid-19, Omicron XE, due to their vaccination status.
The strain, which is a mixture of the BA.1 and BA.2 variants is known to be more transmissible and can cause “considerable illness” in those who do not have their booster.
An Irish study presented to the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Lisbon shows that although Ireland’s vaccination rates remain high, people who are unvaccinated continue to experience ‘considerable illness’ from Covid-19.
The study, which was led by the Department of Infectious Diseases at Galway University Hospital, studied 176 patients who returned a positive test result for Covid-19 between June and November last year and had to be admitted to hospital.
It showed that 76 of these patients had not received a Covid-19 vaccine from the primary series of vaccinations, were generally younger, male, and required respiratory support.
The unvaccinated patients were also nearly four times more likely to be admitted to intensive care, according to the research.
Meanwhile, Luke O'Neill, a professor of immunology at Trinity College Dublin, said he believes that the next Covid surge will hit Ireland in the autumn.
Despite the fear of a jump in cases, he says with vaccination and boosters constantly being rolled out, the public will be vastly more protected against the effects of the illness as opposed to previous waves of infection.
"There's no doubt there will be a surge in the autumn and then we're going to have a lot more cases again and that's a concern," he told Pat Kenny last week.
The latest updates from health officials confirmed that there were 3,348 new cases of the virus on Wednesday, comprised of 1,407 positive PCR tests, while the remainder of the cases had registered their results online.
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