This weekend marks a year since the first case of Covid-19 was detected in Ireland

The first case of Covid-19 in Cork was here in Cork

The man presented at Cork University Hospital on February 25, four days before the first reported case of Covid-19 in Ireland.

Staff at CUH decided to test the patient for Covid-19, even though this was not within national guidelines at the time.
But the patient’s test came back positive for Covid-19, and he became Ireland’s first case of Covid-19 due to community transmission.

Health officials say there are "reasons to be hopeful" but there's still a lot of uncertainty over a return to normality.

Stephen Murphy looks back at the last year for RedFM News 

"Saturday February 29th - and as the spread of coronavirus accelerated around the world, a press conference was called at the Department of Health:

Less than two weeks later, an announcement from then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Washington:

Before the end of March, everyone was being asked to stay at home.

And while cases fell to single digits during the summer, Kildare, Laois and Offaly were back in lockdown from August.

The second wave led to that happening across the entire country in October.

December brought hopes of meeting friends and family over Christmas, but a surge of infection soon followed:

The end of 2020 saw the beginning of the vaccine rollout - which offers real hope according to intensive care consultant, Dr Catherine Motherway:

So far, 4,271 people have died from Covid-19.

And while new variants and vaccine supply issues pose problems, NPHET believes that all going well, things could return to "close to normal" by the end of the year"