The last 5 days has seen an average of 44 cases per day in Ireland.

I'll lay out how that compares to the rest of Europe - in real terms and per 100,000 - and what it says about our situation.

We need to be very aware of how easy it is to let this slip into something worse.

Last 5 days (Jul 28-Aug 1), new cases:

Spain: 9,740
Romania: 6,209
Ukraine: 5,400
France: 4,840
UK: 3,841
Germany: 3,698
Poland: 2,942
Belgium: 2,726
Moldova: 1,959
Serbia: 1,741
Netherlands: 1,581
Italy: 1,546
Bosnia: 1,378
Bulgaria: 1,215
Czechia: 1,183
Sweden: 1,027

Portugal: 1,011
Switzerland: 935
Belarus: 695
N. Macedonia: 678
Austria: 664
Albania: 516
Greece: 360
Croatia: 343
Montenegro: 305
Denmark: 242
Ireland: 227
Slovakia: 156
Norway: 121
Slovenia: 84
Hungary: 78
Lithuania: 74
Finland: 45
Estonia: 38
Latvia: 18

Last 5 days, new cases per 100,000:

Montenegro: 48.5
Moldova: 48.4
Bosnia: 42.1
N. Macedonia: 32.5
Romania: 32.2
Belgium: 23.5
Spain: 20.8
Serbia: 19.9
Albania: 17.9
Bulgaria: 17.5
Ukraine: 12.4
Czech: 11.1
Switzerland: 10.7
Sweden: 10.1
Portugal: 9.9
Netherlands: 9.2

Croatia: 8.4
Poland: 7.8
France: 7.4
Belarus: 7.4
Austria: 7.4
UK: 5.7
Germany: 4.5
Ireland: 4.5
Denmark: 4.2
Slovenia: 4.1
Greece: 3.5
Lithuania: 2.9
Estonia: 2.9
Slovakia: 2.8
Italy: 2.6
Norway: 2.2
Latvia: 1.1
Hungary: 0.8
Finland: 0.8

This has been our first bad run of cases in over a month and it can be disconcerting.

The reality is our previous situation was incredible, relative to the picture throughout Europe, and it's hard to sustain.

Even now, at 44 cases per day, we're doing well in European terms.

Zooming out of an Irish prism, you see that almost the entirety of the Balkans are under the pump in a big way and that happened fast.

Moldova, Bosnia and Serbia are seeing rising case numbers translate to increased mortality, all averaging 10 deaths per day this week.

How we compare to Europe is on one level important and on another level, irrelevant.

It's important to know what coexisting with Covid19 in Europe typically looks like and the answer is 'a lot worse than we have it'.

That's important to gauge how Irish society is performing.

But it's irrelevant in the sense it can slip fast.

1 Irish death is a member of our society dying and it doesn't matter if that's fewer than other European countries.

It's still an Irish person dying from a semi-preventable death.

We can all pitch in to prevent that.

The reason we're seeing increasing case numbers, without hospitalization or death, is younger people are driving the infection.

Routinely 60-80% of new cases under 45 years old, with 25% under 25 years old.

That's excellent in one sense and worrying in another.

It's great in that younger people are typically infecting other younger people. We managed to largely ringfence infection away from older people, who are very vulnerable.

It's bad in the sense if we lose sight of the virus through sheer numbers, old people will start to get it.

From looking at the picture in Europe, too many outbreaks fall under one of these headings:

-Alcohol related
-Meat Plant/Construction Site
-Migrant workers

Those work settings are exceptionally hard to protect but DP and house parties we should be able to stay on top of.

The things we can do to arrest the slide are the same things we did to contain it so well to begin with.

-Wash hands regularly
-Steer clear of others
-Wear masks
-No bolloxology with 100 people at a house party

Redouble efforts on those 4 measures.

The real time trends are stable near 44 cases, which is not what we want.

Last 48 hours:

Tests: 7,087
Positives: 82
Negativity: 98.9%

That's the first 48 hour period of a negativity under 99% since the first week of June.

Part of that is a denominator issue.

The last 48 hours were also the lowest amount of Fri/Sat tests completed since the 2nd week in June.

Therein lies another issue, being replicated throughout Europe, and one we can definitely fix:

People are ignoring symptoms and not getting tested.

There's a largely correct assumption if you're young with a cough, fever, sniffles that you're highly likely to be grand.

But you can still pay for that assumption with your life.

Get tested. It means you can get help quickly if needed and you also help prevent onward spread.

Many people have underlying conditions and don't even know it. Obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes are all under-diagnosed and greatly increase your risk of negative consequences from Covid19.

The famed Irish "Sure I'll be grand" attitude has limitations.

Get a test.

We're still doing excellently overall in Ireland but the same comments applied to Bosnia a month ago.

Since then, they've had more cases and deaths in the month of July than they had in the entire pandemic Feb-June.

When things slip, it's not easy to halt momentum of infection.

We have a solid chance this week to stop the slide and all it involves is a redoubling of efforts on all the basic measures.

Our infection levels are still low.

Each of us do our part to keep them that way and we'll be ok.