How to use your Eircode to find the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in your area

Members of the general public can now use their Eircode to check how many COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in their area.

The facility is provided by the Government as part of a COVID-19 information dashboard.

The site identifies the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at the Electoral Division (ED) level across Ireland since the pandemic began.

Users can enter their Eircode, which then identifies the electoral division they are resident of.

The site will then outline the cumulative number of cases of COVID-19 that have been recorded in that electoral division.

The site is HERE

Simply scroll down to the section headed: COVID-19 Confirmed Cases at Electoral Division (ED) Level

Then enter your Eircode in the search box provided.

WARNING:

Although the figures are based on the residential address of the confirmed positive case, the Department of Health, after a series of queries from the Westmeath Independent, admitted that “In the earlier mass testing in nursing homes, many of the HCW (healthcare workers) had the residential facility as their address. A similar situation related to meat factory outbreaks and mass testing there.”

An explanatory note was later added to the official Government site to indicate that: “For a proportion of notified COVID-19 cases, their location on the map may reflect their place of work rather than their home address.”

As a result, the figure for the number of COVID-19 cases in an electoral division may, in some instances, include either healthcare workers in nursing homes in that electoral division, who do not live in the area, or workers at meat plants in that electoral division, who do not live in the area.

The figures are published by the Department of Health and are a collaboration between the Department of Health, Ordnance Survey Ireland, the All-Ireland Research Observatory, HPSC, HSE and the Central Statistics Office.

The figures are also analysed on a per population basis and a comparison is possible between various areas of the country.

However, the value of that comparison is undermined by the admission that the COVID-19 figures for electoral divisions in some cases include positives tests of people not resident in the area.

The Department of Health says it should be noted that a high proportion of such cases will have fully recovered within a 14 day period.