Everything you need to know about the summer surge in Covid

Any hope that we were done with Covid — at least for the summer months — have been dashed in recent weeks as a fresh wave of the virus washes over Ireland.

The latest spike has been caused by a fresh mutation of the Omicron variant which has made the disease considerably more transmissible than it once was.

While official estimates put the number of people sickened by Covid in the last week at in excess of 20.000, the likely number is much higher.

Just how much higher is impossible to know for sure given the effective dismantling of the mass testing system that was in place in the earlier phases of the pandemic.

The good news — or at least the comparatively good news — is that the latest version of Covid-19 does not appear to make people sicker with the numbers being hospitalised and admitted to ICUs around the country remaining low in recent days.

But what is driving the surge and what is likely to happen next?

UCD virologist Dr Gerald Barry talks to In The News about the new wave Covid and what we might do to keep it at bay over the summer and into the darker winter months ahead.