IRELAND: Hope that coronavirus peak will be smaller than feared

By David Young, PA

Optimism is growing that Ireland's coronavirus infection peak will be smaller than first feared, the chief medical officer has said.

Dr Tony Holohan credited social distancing measures with continuing to reduce the infection rate.

He said Irish hospitals were also currently not experiencing significant daily increases in intensive care admissions.

The chief medical officer did however express concern at growing clusters of the infection in nursing home settings.

"So we've seen progress on a continuing basis now for 10 days or more in terms of the so-called flattening of the curve," he said.

"We think we're pushing out the wave of infection. We think we're pushing down the peak of that. And the reason that I say that is we started out with a percentage increase day-on-day of something in the region of 33%, and that has reduced steadily and that continues to reduce."

He added: "As we continue to improve, we're continuing to grow in our optimism that that peak might be further in the future, and smaller."

The coronavirus death toll in Ireland is 174, with 16 further deaths reported on Monday.

There were 370 new confirmed cases, taking the overall total to 5,364.

Dr Holohan said further fatalities are expected, but he expressed hope Ireland may not witness sharp rises in the daily death toll.

"Obviously we don't want to see any more deaths and none of us wants to see that but our expectation is that we will continue to see deaths," he said.

"What we're seeing in terms of the pattern there seems, broadly speaking, to be in line with what we are seeing in terms of the infection overall and in terms of the admissions to intensive care units and so on.

"And I guess the question for us will be how much further is it going to rise and over what time period."

Dr Holohan also said the coming week would be key in terms of predicting when a surge might come, as it will demonstrate how effective the current lockdown on movement has been.

"Over the course of this week we will begin to see the full effect of the further restricted measures that we have implemented as a country 10 days ago," he said.

"And obviously we're hopeful in terms of the pattern of deaths we see in the population. But we still expect to see further deaths and all I can say to you at this point in time is we'll report in as real time a way and as honest a way as we can those figures as we have them.

"And as they give us a greater sense of where we're at in terms of future projections, we will share that with you."

Dr Holohan said he was not anticipating a change to the current restrictions on movement when the initial period of their imposition ends on Sunday.

"We expect fully these measures to be in place all the way up as far as the 12th," he said.

"We will review at our meeting on Friday again the extent to which we think the situation has, or merits, change. I'm not anticipating that at this moment in time and we keep the disease and the various criteria that we think are important in that ongoing assessment over the week under review."

He urged people to resist the temptation to head out in the forecast good weather over the Easter holiday weekend.

"I think our advice would be for people to stay at home," he said.

"If they have second homes, not to travel to them, not to engage in unnecessary travel or leisure activity.

"We understand the challenge that that is for people, the ask that is for society, we understand that it's a significant one. Particularly I heard the weather forecast myself this morning, it's appealing-looking weather for the next number of days - that makes it a bit more difficult for people.

"But we are asking people to have patience with us, to continue to follow the advice as people have, for the most part, very well followed that advice."