Hospitals have reported a further reduction in the number of patients admitted with confirmed and suspected cases of Covid-19.
There are now a total of 902 patients in hospitals with either confirmed or suspected coronavirus.
The hospitals with the most confirmed cases are in Dublin.
There are 99 cases at the Mater; St James's Hospital has 73 and Beaumont Hospital has 67 patients with the virus.
Elsewhere, University Hospital Limerick has 48 cases, Mayo University Hospital has 31 and there are 21 patients at Letterkenny University Hospital with the virus.
The latest figures also show there are 90 patients with the virus in intensive care units, which is also a reduction on recent days.
Meanwhile, the testing criteria issued to GPs for Covid-19 has been broadened, so that patients no longer need to be in an at-risk group to be referred for a test.
Patients need only to have a sudden onset of either a cough, fever, or shortness of breath, and no other cause that explains their illness, to be eligible for testing.
The Health Service Executive now has capacity for 84,000 tests a week, according to health officials.
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Yesterday, the Department of Health said that 23 more people had died after being diagnosed with Covid-19. It brings the total number of deaths to date to 1,339.
An additional 211 cases of the coronavirus have also been diagnosed, bringing the number of confirmed cases to 21,983.
As of last Wednesday, 70% of people who contracted coronavirus have recovered.
A small increase in the number of Covid-19 outbreaks, or clusters, has been reported by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.
The number has risen by three to 706.
There have been 228 outbreaks in nursing homes and 133 in residential institutions. There have been 126 outbreaks in private houses, 88 in hospitals and 34 in workplaces.
The figures are up to 5 May.
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Around 80% of cases of Covid-19 will be a mild to moderate illness, close to 14% have severe disease and around 6% are critical.
Generally, you need to be 15 minutes or more in the vicinity of an infected person and within 2 metres of them, to be considered at-risk, or a close contact.
The President of the Irish College of General Practitioners and a member of National Public Health Emergency Team, has said there was a slight increase in number of people seeking Covid-19 testing when criteria was expanded last week.
Dr Mary Favier, a GP in Cork, said the wider we can "cast the net" the better the chances are of containing the coronavirus and she urged anyone with respiratory symptoms or who is "feeling the onset of flu" to contact their doctor.
She said the change in testing criteria has not changed the clinical management of cases and while patients are waiting for test results they will follow the same self-isolation procedures that are currently in place.
Dr Favier said the broadening of testing criteria is not expected to overwhelm the testing and the amount of flu like illness has dropped dramatically since Covid-19 testing first began in March (about fifteen-fold) so a lot fewer people are likely to be seeking a test.
She told RTÉ's Morning Ireland that she expected contact testing, the last piece of the puzzle, should come quite quickly and once that is in place - then there is a fully functional robust system that can be rolled out.
She reiterated the importance of social distancing and hand hygiene because these are the long term things that we "all need to do", she said.
Dr Favier said GPs are becoming increasingly concerned about patients not presenting with non-Covid related symptoms.
She said that in her surgery, presentation of breast lumps and chronic cough are down significantly.
She added that patients have an understandable fear of the coronavirus illness but she urged them to make contact with their doctors, saying they should be assured that the appropriate infection control procedures are in place.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Dr Tomás Ryan, Associate Professor at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College in Dublin said that if there are 200 new cases of Covid-19 when lockdown comes to an end, at that point about 20,000 people should be tested a day.
He said Ireland should model itself on South Korea, which had a very sophisticated testing and tracing system in dealing with Covid-19.
South Korea used credit card and health statements of those who tested positive for Covid 19 which Dr. Ryan acknowledged did raise privacy concerns but if managed correctly, it can feel much less invasive than a more manual based system.
He said South Korea has tested far fewer people than in Ireland, so it is not just about capacity as he added that capacity is meaningless unless you have speed.
Dr Ryan said testing needs to happen within 24 hours and contact tracing needs to happen within 48 hours of that, which gives a three-day window.
He said a manual contact tracing operation on its own is not as effective as needed.
Dr Ryan added that Singapore had a highly manual contact tracing operation, which did not have enough reach of information and that's part of the reason why they had a delayed infection surge.
