There have been 802 new cases of Covid-19 notified to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre in the last 48 hours.

A total of 447 new cases had been notified up to midnight on Friday, and a further 355 new cases were confirmed yesterday.

The Department of Health has not released any updated figures of any further deaths of people with Covid-19 in the last two days due to the ongoing ransomware attack on the HSE and the Department.

The latest Department of Health figures have 109 Covid-19 patients in Irish hospitals, of which 42 are in ICU.

The Department has advised that daily case figures for Friday and Saturday of this week may change due to “future data validation”.

A spokesperson yesterday stated it would not be releasing daily figures due to the “current disruption of the HSE IT systems” but would publish backdated figures when possible.

Over two million vaccine doses have been administered in the State as of yesterday, with more than 40pc of the adult population of Ireland receiving at least one dose, HSE Chief Paul Reid said.

Vaccination of the over 40s group will begin before the end of this month, it emerged today.

Mr Reid also confirmed the HSE would call on the 40-49 age group to begin registering for vaccination on the online portal in the coming days.

Earlier today, HSE Chief Clinical Officer, Dr Colm Henry said that this age group can expect to begin receiving a vaccine by the end of this month.

Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week radio programme, he said about vaccinations in relation to this age group: “We expect that to progress in larger numbers in that decade than before.”

He said that they would expect start vaccinating people in their 40s at the end of this month and throughout June.

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Meanwhile, in relation to potential disruption to services this over the coming days, he said: “Anybody who has any doubts or any concerns, I urge them to look up the HSE website where there is national and local hospital specific information.”

He added: “We are planning at this stage on focusing on urgent, emergency and time critical care and we are cancelling all care not related to that on a hospital by hospital basis.”

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