HSE boss says the rising number of Covid cases is an early warning signal

769 new cases were confirmed here last night, which is the highest number since the end of February.

359 people are in hospital with the virus this morning and it's been stuck at a similar number for the past week.

15 patients are being treated for Covid at Cork University Hospital including two people in the ICU.

Paul Reid says more mixing and movement is leading to the increase: 

"I think what we can definitely say is increased mixing between homes, we're seeing high transmission levels as we know of this variance, and what we can see is, if you're close contact of a positive case at the moment you've got a 22% likelihood of being positive yourself because that's the high transmission levels."