Coronavirus: Sharp rise in meat plant cases ‘concerning’ – health officials

A sharp rise in the number of coronavirus cases related to outbreaks in meat processing plants in the past week has been described as “concerning” by health officials.

The number of cases in meat plants has increased by more than 300 to 828, according to latest figures from the National Public Health Emergency Team.

There are now 16 clusters – defined as two or more cases – across meat processing plants.

Dr Ronan Glynn, deputy chief medical officer, said the rapid increase in cases related to meat plants over the last week was "concerning" and would be discussed at a meeting of the emergency team on Friday.

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Sixteen more people with Covid-19 have died in the State, bringing the total number of deaths to 1,561, the team reported on Tuesday.

The number of known cases increased by 51 to a total of 24,251. This is the fourth day in a row there have been fewer than 100 cases.

Some 295,626 coronavirus tests had been carried out by midnight on Monday.

The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in direct provision centres increased by 22 over the past week to 171. There are also six clusters of the virus among the Travelling community, accounting for 46 cases.

Some 849 deaths in nursing homes account for 54 per cent of the total number of fatalities from the virus in the State. There are clusters of the virus in 459 residential care facilities, 258 of which are nursing homes.

Long haul

Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan told the daily briefing that society could be dealing with coronavirus for years. "Nobody is in a position to put a finite period, nobody in the world, around when this will be at an end," he said.

Ireland was among the quickest countries in the world to implement visitor restrictions for nursing homes, he said.

The State announced restrictions for nursing homes on March 12th, 14 days after the first confirmed case here. “No country introduced visitor restrictions more quickly that we did, relative to when it had its first case of infection,” he said.

In New Zealand the time between the first case and care home restrictions was 22 days, in Norway 16 days, in the Netherlands 22 days, in Spain 41 days, and in Germany 48 days, Dr Holohan said.

On March 6th, Nursing Homes Ireland introduced a ban on visits. When asked about this on March 10th, Dr Holohan said the blanket restrictions were "not necessary" at that time.

On Tuesday Dr Holohan said the number of cases jumped significantly on March 11th, which led to a snap meeting of the emergency team that night, and the announcement of school closures and nursing home visitor restrictions the next day by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

Dr Colm Henry, HSE chief clinical officer, said it was "difficult to attribute one reason" to the spread in nursing homes.

In a statement, Meat Industry Ireland said its figures showed that 496 workers who had tested positive had gone through the appropriate self-isolation, recovered and were back at work. It said the rise in cases was disappointing and welcomed a HSE guidance note to assist the industry.