Ireland has ‘flattened curve’ of coronavirus spread, says its chief medical officer
- Tony Holohan says a nationwide adherence to a lockdown, imposed until 5 May, has ‘already saved hundreds of lives’
- An analysis of Ireland’s virus reproductive rate shows that on average, an infected person is passing on the disease to ‘less than one person’, he says
“We think we’ve flattened that [ …] curve so much that there is no peak,” Tony Holohan said on RTE’s Late Late show on Friday. “We think we can go along at a low level and reduce it even further.”
He said nationwide adherence to a lockdown – imposed until May 5 – had “already saved hundreds of lives and admissions to intensive care”.
Ireland, like many other countries, had been bracing for a surge in cases, where transmission would peak and hospitals become overrun with patients.
But Holohan said analysis shows the reproductive rate of the virus – the number of people a confirmed case typically spreads to – is now below one.
“That means that on average a person who’s infected is passing it down to less than one person,” he said. “If you continue on that path, the rate of infection in the population will continue to drop.”