A FURTHER eight people have died in the Republic of Ireland after contracting the coronavirus.
The Department of Health yesterday confirmed that eight more people have lost their life to the virus, bringing Ireland's total coronavirus-related deaths to 54.
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) indicated that of the eight patients who have passed were five women and three men, with a median age of 86.
Of those who died, six lived in the east of the country, one in the south and one in the west. The HPSC have said that six of the eight patients had underlying health conditions.
An additional 295 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the country as of yesterday, 30 March 2020, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 2,910.
84 people have been admitted to Intensive Care Units with severe symptoms.
Experts had predicted that Ireland could be faced with 15,000 confirmed cases by the end of March, but the strict guidelines on social distancing and self isolation seems to have successfully slowed the spread.
Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, said:
"We are beginning to see encouraging signs in our efforts to flatten the curve. However, we cannot become complacent as we are still seeing new cases and more ICU admissions every day.
“Our strategy remains the implementation of public health restrictions to interrupt the spread of the virus and prevent people from arriving to ICU in first place.”
Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (IEMAG), said:
"We know what an unmitigated epidemic looks like, we are not on that track.
“The model reveals that before restrictions were in place, daily growth rate of confirmed cases was at 33%. This has fallen in recent days to around 15%. But it is still growing and needs to fall further.
“It takes time to see the impact of our efforts in the numbers. It will be another 7-10 days before we have a reliable picture of how effective our collective efforts have been.”
