Health officials have announced 217 confirmed cases of COVID-19 this evening – the highest daily figure since May.

It takes the national total to 29,025.

No new deaths have been reported, and the death toll remains at 1,777.

Some 103 of the new cases are in Dublin, with 25 in Kildare, 17 in Limerick, seven in Waterford, seven in Wicklow, six in Clare, five in Louth and the rest spread around Carlow, Cavan, Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kilkenny, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Westmeath and Wexford.

The acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn said 19 of the cases have been identified as community transmission while more than half are  associated with outbreaks or are close contacts of a previously confirmed case.

“While the number of cases today is the highest daily reported figure since May, the five-day moving average remains relatively stable at 115 cases per day,” said Dr Glynn.

“However, this is still a substantial number of cases and I urge everyone to double down on their efforts now – wash hands regularly, physically distance from others, wear face coverings where appropriate, avoid crowded areas, know the symptoms, isolate and contact your GP if you have any concerns.

“Please continue to reduce your social contacts so that the virus does not get the opportunity to spread further.”

Concern

Meanwhile, Anthony Staines, Professor of Health Systems at DCU, told Newstalk that reducing the numbers should not be an impossible task.

“It is certainly cause for concern but not cause for widespread alarm and upset,” he said.

“We have had higher numbers of cases than this before and we have managed to bring it down. We managed to bring the number of cases down in Kildare, we managed to bring the number of cases down in Laois and Offaly and I think we can manage to bring the cases down nationally.”

Optimism

He said people all over Ireland have made significant changes in response to the virus and there is still cause for optimism.

“Many people are social distancing so that keeps down the spread,” he said.

“People are washing their hands; people are wearing masks – all of this keeps down the spread.

“Tracking and tracing is much better than it was. You have a number of cases and perhaps in March they would have led to 50 more cases – now they might lead to ten more cases and that all adds up.”

As of 8am this morning, there were 36 confirmed cases of the virus in Irish hospitals and six patients in intensive care.

Of the 62,056 tests carried out in the past seven days, 1.2% came back positive.

Some 70% of the new cases were in patients under the age of 45