AHEAD OF THE CURVE

CORONO CRISIS: PUBLIC ARE PRAISED FOR SAVING LIVES

- SYLVIA POWNALL and LIZ FARSACI

CHIEF medical officer Tony Holohan says Ireland’s Covid-19 curve has been flattened to such an extent that there is no peak expected.

The Department of Health’s top medic added public efforts to slow the spread of the virus through restrictions had possibly saved “hundreds of lives”.

Speaking on RTE’s Late Late Show, he said: “What was really important for us to do was suppress the virus in the community.

“We think we’ve flattened that curve so much that there is no peak, that we think we can go along at a low level and reduce it even further.”

A new graph shows that the daily deaths due to Covid-19 in Ireland may have actually peaked 12 days ago on April 7 and have almost halved since then.

The number of deaths reported by the NPHET daily reflects the figure notified to them each day, rather than the numbers who actually died on that day.

The news came as the head of the HSE’s coronavirus advisory group said he expected some easing of restrictions to come on May 5.

Dr Cillian de Gascun said: “The challenge for us now is releasing those restrictions in a measured, step-wise approach in a context where we can track the virus in the community over the coming weeks.”