Central Statistics Office health and wellbeing figures published this morning show 25,201 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,679 COVID-19 deaths in Ireland, as of the start of this week.

Consumption of alcohol rose from 10.5 litres to 11 litres per person between 2013 and 2018, the figures show.

And medical costs were 2.2% of average weekly household expenditure in Ireland, in 2015.

Around 19% of men in Ireland smoked in 2019, compared with 16% of women, while health-worker density was 24.2 per thousand.

Weekly earnings increase

Meanwhile, earnings and labour-costs statistics show that average weekly earnings were €801.83 in Q1, an increase of 3.9% since Q1 2019.

Government measures put in place in response to COVID-19 only related to weeks 11-13 in Q1 2020, meaning the impact of the pandemic on earnings and labour costs for Q1 2020 is minimal, as most sectors were unaffected for 11 weeks of the quarter, with some sectors unaffected for all of Q1.

Average hourly earnings increased by 3.2% to €24.81 from €24.05 in Q1 2019.

Paid hours

Average weekly paid hours increased 0.6% to 32.3 hours from 32.1 hours in Q1 2019.

The job-vacancy rate at the end of Q1 2020 was 0.7%, down from 1.0% at the end of Q1 2019.