COVID-19

Forty additional Covid-19 cases, one additional death

Forty additional Covid-19 cases, one additional death
Ireland will change from a phased-based system, to a 'weather warning' colour-coded system to denote areas where the virus is spreading rapidly.

Forty new cases of Covid-19 have been reported to the Department of Health in the past 24 hours, while 1 additional death from the virus has been recorded.

Today's figures bring Ireland's 14-day incidence rate to 18.9 cases per 100,000.

This comes as Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said outbreaks of the virus are likely to occur when schools reopen in September.

Mr Varadkar said: "It’s almost inevitable that if schools open that there will be clusters in some schools. Does that mean that that school did something wrong or the principal was somehow negligent? Probably not."

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The reopening of schools is due to go ahead as normal next month despite concerns that some will not be able to adhere to Covid-19 guidelines due to class sizes facilities in schools.

Funding was made available to schools to carry out alterations to buildings in order to make them compliant with regulations, but the tight timeframe to carry out the necessary works was said to be an issue in many areas.

Elsewhere, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly announced that the Government will adopt a 'weather warning' based colour-coded system to monitor outbreaks of the virus around the country. Areas will be given a colour; red, orange, yellow or blue.

Areas with a red status may be considered for local lockdown measures, while blue, which is the colour given to vaccines in the medical sector, will be given to areas that have suppressed the virus.

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