Health officials will today discuss a sudden rise in coronavirus patients admitted to intensive care yesterday.

Eight people were admitted to ICU with the virus yesterday – the highest number of 24-hours since the middle of Spring.

The Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan warned that COVID-19 is “still an extremely infectious disease which has the potential to lead to hospitalisation and even ICU admissions.”

He said the Irish people have managed to suppress the virus to the lowest levels in the EU in recent weeks but warned that now is not the time to sit back.

“If we do not continue to suppress the disease through the actions we have learned over recent months, we will very quickly see a surge in infections leading to an increase in hospitalisations, ICU admissions and, tragically, deaths,” he said.

“We are actively planning to begin vaccinating people in early 2021. We cannot afford to drop our guard now.”

227 more cases were confirmed last night and five further virus-related deaths were announced.

Coronavirus

DCU Professor Health Systems Anthony Staines said the ICU admissions are a stark reminder of how damaging this disease can be.

He said he expects the vaccine to be rolled out faster than the swine flu vaccines were in 2009.

“We got out two million doses of the vaccine in about six months, I suspect this time we will go faster,” he said.

“We do need to give two doses of vaccine to each person whereas before we only needed to give one – so the challenge is more complicated.

“It is up to us to cooperate with it to make sure that if we get an appointment to come in and be vaccinated that we come in and that we turn up for our second dose.”

Vaccine

The Government has signed off on a 15-phase plan to rollout the vaccine to everyone in Ireland as soon as it is approved by EU regulators.

The Health Minister has pledged to begin administering it within days of approval.