“That’s the impact that we’ve had from all of the work that everybody across society has done.”
Chief Medical Officer with the Department of Health Dr Tony Holohan has said that Ireland has flattened the curve of the Covid-19 outbreak and that a peak is no longer expected.
Speaking on The Late Late Show, Holohan attributed it to the hard work done by communities and the measures introduced which have saved “hundreds of lives”.
“What was really important for us to do…was suppress the virus in the community,” Holohan said.
“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.”
“That’s the impact that we’ve had from all of the work that everybody across society has done,” he said.
Holohan praised the high numbers of people complying with the restrictions which have contributed to the reproductive number of of the virus falling below one in Ireland.
“If we continue on that path the rate of infection will continue to drop,” he said.
When asked about the current restrictions, Holohan said they will remain in place until at least 5 May but said there is no rule book on how to correctly ease restrictions.
“What we would like to do at the beginning is look at the things that have the lowest rate of infection and the greatest benefit resulting from lifting the measures,” he said.
“We have to be careful as we lift restrictions that we don’t get an unexpected surge in that [reproductive] number.”
The reproductive number, known as the R0 (pronounced r-nought), is the expected number of cases generated from each individual case of the virus. In Ireland, the R0 is less than one which means that on average, each infected person is passing it on to less than one other.
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