Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 May 2021
754. Deputy Paul Kehoe asked the Minister for Health the reason the daily Covid-19 figures by county have not been available at weekends; if there are plans to resume supplying this information; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24003/21]
View answerUnder Infectious Diseases (Amendment) Regulations 2020, all medical practitioners are required to notify the Medical Officer of Health (MOH)/Director of Public Health (DPH) of certain diseases including Covid-19. Cases are then reported on a daily basis to the Department of Health by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC).
Daily county numbers in the press release are flagged as being provisional as the national Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting System (CIDR) is a dynamic system and case details are continually being validated and updated.
In particular, cases may need additional validation in relation to the county of residence and you will see on a daily basis small differences between the daily county case numbers in the press release and those published on the COVID-19 data hub the following day.
In recent weeks it was agreed with the HPSC to discontinue the inclusion of the provisional daily county numbers for cases notified up to midnight the previous day in the press release at weekends.
While the provisional daily county numbers up to midnight the previous day are no longer included in the daily press release at weekends, the daily confirmed case counts up to midnight the day prior to this continue to be published on the COVID-19 data hub every day. This data is published at the same time as the daily press release. The additional time lag allows further validation of the case detail including details of county of residence. This data is also made available through the COVID-19 app every day.
A full series of the data is made available as open data.
This consists of the cumulative totals for each county for each day and is published in a number of formats (including CSV).
Further information:
Daily cumulative county confirmed case totals can be downloaded from the following link.
https://data.gov.ie/dataset/covid19countystatisticshpscireland1
