An immunologist has said Ireland is experiencing an uptick in Covid-19 cases, but restricted PCR testing makes it difficult to establish an exact figure.
Professor of Immunology at Dublin City University Christine Loscher said there are around 8,000 to 10,000 cases of Covid-19 here a day.
Speaking on RTÉ's The Business, she said: "We're not really going to know how many cases we have, because we have quite restricted PCR testing to people over the age of 55 at the moment. "We’re doing about 5,000 (PCR tests) a day, which is nowhere near what we were doing at the height of the pandemic." As of this morning, there were 537 people in hospitals around the country with Covid-19, an increase of 22 on the same time yesterday.
Of these, 28 people are in intensive care units with the virus. Prof Loscher said: "Everybody seems to know somebody who has Covid, which was the position we were in about four months ago. "It's certainly much higher in the last few weeks than it has been.