Covid-19: Children account for 21.5% of last week's new cases
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Children aged five to 12 accounted for 21.5% of new Covid cases last week, and also saw the highest number of new cases for any age group.
Seven further deaths were reported. This includes one healthcare worker which brings the numbers of deaths among these staff to 20 now.
Dublin remains the county with the highest number of new cases identified. However, the rate of infection per 100,000 of population is now higher than Dublin across 10 counties including Cork, Waterford and Tipperary.
There were 34,208 new cases last week, according to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC). They found 7,359 new cases in the five to 12 age group with figures showing a steady increase among these children since the week of October 24 from 2,374 new cases then.
Teenagers aged 13 to 18 saw 2,025 new cases. This much lower figure is probably attributable to the high vaccination rate among this age group. Separate HSE figures show 76% of children aged 12 to 17 were fully vaccinated up to the weekend.
There were 1,810 new cases among younger children aged under four last week. Adults aged 35 to 44 who experienced the virus had 6,467 new cases and are the group with the second-highest number of new infections.
Cases among over-65s continue to drop, which the HSE have linked to the vaccine booster campaign. Just 76 over-85s caught the virus down from 124 two weeks ago. There were 353 cases among people in their late 70s or early 80s and 1,475 among those in their late 60s or early 70s.
There were 214 cases among healthcare workers, amounting to 0.6% of the weekly total.
Last week, Cork accounted for the highest percentage of Covid cases per county in Munster, with 12% of the number of cases nationally identified there, affecting 4,092 people. Tipperary was the next highest in Munster with 1,337 cases which accounted for 3.9% of national cases.
Limerick, with 997 cases, made up 2.9% of the national numbers. Waterford and Kerry had similar numbers with 895 or 2.6% of all cases in Kerry and 870 or 2.5% of all cases identified in Waterford.
Clare continues to have the lowest number of new cases in Munster with 719 people getting sick, coming to 2.1% of all national cases.
Analysis of wastewater sewage systems found strong signs of Covid-19 in all of the 67 areas surveyed, the HPSC said. In five they found levels had increased by more than 50%, and by between 10 to 50% in 42 areas.
Vaccination figures up to Monday show 394,300 children aged between 10 and 19 fully vaccinated. Up to Tuesday, 90.01% of everyone over the age of 12 was fully vaccinated.
The booster campaign continues with the department of health figures showing up to Monday 41.8% of those aged 60 to 69 were done, 85% of people aged 70 to 79 and 91.2% of the over-80s.
This part of the roll-out extends to those aged 50 to 59 starting today.
The HPSC were notified today of 4,152 new cases of Covid-19. There were 543 people in hospital with the virus, including 118 in ICUs which is the highest this month.