There has been 649 outbreaks of coronavirus in the week leading up to last Saturday.
The majority of the clusters identified were in private homes.
Some 461 outbreaks or clusters of COVID-19 occurred in the seven days leading up to last Saturday October 17th.
Number of COVID-19 outbreaks notified in Ireland by outbreak setting and by closure status, up to midnight on Saturday 17/10/2020, N=5,590. Source: HPSCThe second most common place an outbreak was identified was schools, with 46 recorded as part of the latest Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) data.
Some 18 outbreaks occurred in a workplace, while five were connected to nursing homes, and eight were within a residential institution.
Number of COVID-19 workplace outbreaks notified up to midnight on 17/10/2020 and laboratory confirmed cases linked to workplace outbreaks*. Source: HPSCSeven childcare facilities experienced an outbreak and a further eight originated in pubs.
In the same week, three outbreaks happened in meat processing plants - and four were related to construction sites.
In total, 198 COVID-19 outbreaks in workplaces were notified up to midnight on October 17th involving a variety of workplaces and facilities.
Some 75 notified COVID-19 outbreaks were in various food/beverage related industries, of which 47 were in meat/poultry/fish processing plants.
A further five were in mushroom farms or facilities.
There were 19 new outbreaks among the vulnerable populations: 17 of which were in the Irish Traveller community, where there was 258 cases notified during the week in question.
Number of COVID-19 outbreaks in settings involving vulnerable populations, including the Roma community, Irish Traveller community, outbreaks in Direct Provision Centres, facilities for the homeless/those with addiction issues and prisons notified up to midnight on 17/10/2020 and laboratory confirmed cases linked to these outbreaks*. Source: CIDRIt comes amid concerns that the contact tracing system here has 'effectively collapsed' as numbers mount.
On Tuesday, Dr Maitiu O Tuathail said: "As a GP on the frontline, and I've been speaking to GPs across the country, most people are able to get a test on the same day or within 24 hours.
"Most people are getting a result within two days, but contact tracing has essentially collapsed.
"We just don't have the capacity to contact trace 1,000 people every single day in Ireland."
While the former director-general of the Health Service Executive (HSE), Tony O'Brien, earlier told The Pat Kenny Show it is a mixture of understaffing and an overwhelming workload.
He said: "You can either see this an understaffing issue or an overwhelming issue, and I think probably the truth lies somewhere in-between.
"But it's also the case that when you get to a certain level of new cases every day, the ability of the system to ramp up and deal with that in the speedy way that we'd all like it to be done is going to be extremely challenged.
"And I would take the view that whilst everybody is different, certainly if I was to receive a positive COVID test, my first port of call I think would be to contact everyone I knew I'd been in contact with in the relevant period myself.
"So at some point we do have to balance individual responsibility and what the State can do.
"Because we're now going into level five we're doing that because, effectively, COVID is currently out of control - and any system is capable of being overwhelmed in a situation like that unfortunately", he added.
Reporting by Kacey O'Riordan | Additional reporting: Jack Quann
