Donegal has the worst Covid rate in Ireland right now with Dr Tony Holohan warning that something needs to change.
Earlier today, health authorities confirmed four additional deaths related to Covid-19 and 545 new cases.
264 of the new cases were in Dublin, 58 in Kildare, 50 in Cork, 29 in Donegal and 28 in Galway.
The remaining 116 cases are spread across 21 other counties. However, NPHET is concerned about the incidence rate that's developing in Donegal.
As seen below, here are the 6 counties with the highest 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 population (16 April - 29 April) and Donegal tops the list.
Donegal - 293.4
Kildare - 238.6
Westmeath - 190.4
Dublin - 184.4
Offaly - 171.9
Longford - 168.8
Speaking this evening, Dr Holohan was damning in his assessment of the epidemiological situation and case numbers in the county.
"There have been clear examples of non-compliance. There's a concerning level of compliance compared to the rest of the country. A number of the kind of activities have happened that - let's just be honest, the dogs in the streets, including those in Donegal all know- shouldn't be happening or happened," said the Chief Medical Officer.
On this point, Dr Glynn also stated that Donegal's incidence rate is far above the national average, with two local areas drawing heavy criticism.
"Donegal's incidence is close to 300 per 100,000, and the national incidence at the moment is 127 per 100,000. It's clearly way over and above what we're seeing across much the rest of the county, the community positivity rate in Donegal is running at about 12% compared to 7% across the rest of the country. The incidence rate in Donegal has pretty much gone above or exceeded the national average since last September.
"Barring a few weeks in February, it's more or less been above the national average over that entire period since then. At the moment, it doesn't appear that workplaces are a key driver of what's happening and unfortunately, as Dr Holohan said, there has just been a persistent and reasonably widespread non-compliance with basic measures.
"We're seeing birthday parties, peer parties, secondary school children meeting up socially outside of school environments, social events linked to funerals and wakes. As I said before, if there's one big workplace outbreak, in some ways, it makes it easier to control.
"When it's widespread across a range of the population, it's much more difficult. It's all the more important that all sectors of society get behind the key messages. To put it into perspective, the national incidence is 127 per 100,000. At the moment, in Milford, the incidence is 675 per 100,000. In Letterkenny, it's almost 600 per 100,000.
Here's a detailed look at the county-by-county breakdown of the respective incidence rates.
