A Profile of COVID-19 in Ireland - Using Census 2016 Household Data to Analyse COVID-19 Waves, March 2020 - May 2021

Households

• The 178,620 confirmed COVID-19 cases which were matched to the CSO’s pseudonymised Census of Population Analysis (COPA) 2016 data lived in 117,657 households. This is an average of 1.52 confirmed cases per household in the sample.

• The average number of persons per household affected by COVID-19 increased across the waves, rising from 3.7 in wave 1 to 4.6 in wave 3.

• The percentage of cases in single persons rose between wave 1 and wave 3, from 44% to 47%, while other marital statuses remained consistent.

• There was a drop in cases among married or cohabiting couples with children from 54% in wave 1 to 49% in wave 3, while there was a rise among married or cohabiting couples without children from 13% in wave 1 to 25% in wave 3.

• Over 80% of cases in each wave were Irish nationals. The proportion of cases which were Asian or Asian Irish fell from 5% in wave 1 to 2% in waves 2 and 3. There was a slight increase in the percentage of matched cases who were Black or Black Irish – African from 2% in wave 1 to 3% in wave 2 before a fall to 1% in wave 3. Other ethnicities remained consistent across the waves.

• Irish nationality was consistent across all three waves, at 88% in wave 1 and 89% in waves 2 and 3. Non-EU/UK nationality accounted for 2% of cases in wave 1 compared with 1% in other waves.

• The vast majority (85%) of cases were born in Ireland, while 6% were born in the UK and 5% were born in the EU-East.

Housing

• Private houses made up 96% of the sample while the balance of 4% were communal establishments on Census night 2016.
  • In wave 3, 43% of private households were detached houses, 31% were semi-detached while 17% were terraced. These proportions were consistent across the other waves.

• For nature of occupancy, there has been an increase in the percentage of cases related to households that owned with mortgage or loan from 40% in wave 1 to 44% in wave 2, while 26% of cases in all waves were renting in April 2016.

• Of those households who were renting, the most common landlord type was a private landlord followed by local authority and 4% of households in the COVID-19 sample across all waves stated they were renting from a voluntary/co-operative housing body.

• In households with a confirmed COVID-19 case, 19% were in overcrowded homes in wave 1 compared to 14% of cases in wave 2 and 8% of cases in wave 3, defined as over 1 person per room compared to the general population where 1 in 10 people live in overcrowded houses.