COVID-19 UPDATE: A further 16 pass away as new figures show 70 incidents of spitting at Gardai in past month
A further 16 people lost their lives from Covid-19 in the Republic of Ireland in the last 24 hours, the HSE said this evening.
The total death toll here is now 1,561 while the number of confirmed cases has now reached 24,251 after another 51 were diagnosed.
Earlier today, the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan told the Dáil’s Covid-19 committee today that the HSE practice whereby Covid-19 test results of staff are being given to employers before their workers, is a “breach of confidentiality”.
RTÉ News revealed previously that in some cases, where mass screening of workforces takes place, the results were given to the companies before workers.
The HSE CEO Paul Reid also told the committee that we will be dealing with the Covid-19 for some considerable time and that the county and world remain in the midst of the pandemic crisis.
Meanwhile, there have been 70 incidents of spitting and coughing against members of An Garda Síochána in the past month. Figures released by gardai revealed that members had to use anti-spit guards 57 times between April 8 until May 16.
“Regrettably, these reprehensible spitting and coughing attacks on our personnel continue,” Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said:
“These are a significant health and safety risk to our members in the current environment. We must protect them from such attacks.”
Gardai reported that up to last Saturday they have invoked regulations 241 times out of the hundreds of thousands of interactions with the public.
There have been 1,621 incidents where other offences were disclosed in the course of Covid-19 operations.
These range from incidents such as drink driving or disqualified drivers detected at checkpoints, to drugs and weapons seizures, to public order offences.
