Dublin, Aug 20 (IANS): Eighty-four per cent of adults in Ireland have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, a senior public health official announced.

Paul Reid, chief executive officer of the Health Service Executive (HSE), an agency responsible for Ireland's vaccination program, made the announcement in a tweet on Thursday, reports Xinhua news agency.

He said that 6.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the country, which has an estimated population of 5 million.

While vaccines continue to reduce serious illness, hospitalisations, admissions to intensive care units (ICU) and deaths, he warned that people should take caution as the virus is "hugely prevalent" in the country.

At a HSE press briefing on Thursday afternoon, Reid said 124,000 children aged 12-15 in the country have registered for vaccination and 72,000 of them have received their first dose.

There are an estimated 280,000 children falling into this age group in Ireland.

The Irish Department of Health on Thursday reported an additional 1,818 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country.

As of early Thursday morning, there were 244 Covid-19 patients being treated in hospitals across the country, 52 of them were in ICU, according to a statement from the department.

Ireland saw a spike in Covid-19 cases since mid-July, sending the country into a fourth wave of infections since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Under the current wave, the weekly cases in the country have exceeded the peak levels in the first and second wave, which occurred in mid-April and mid-October of 2020, but still lower than the level in the third wave which peaked in early January of this year.

Over the last seven days, there were altogether 12,348 confirmed cases in Ireland, said Tony Holohan, chief medical officer of the Department of Health in a Thursday statement.