The Department of Health has announced that an additional 57 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed, and that no further deaths have been recorded.
There have now been a total of 26,768 confirmed cases, while the death toll stands at 1,772.
Of the cases confirmed today, 29 are men and 28 are women. Over 70% of today's cases are under the age of 45.
Thirty-one cases have been confirmed to be associated with outbreaks or are close contacts of a confirmed case, while another eight cases have been identified as community transmission.
Geographically, 19 cases are located in Kildare, 11 in Dublin, ten in Offaly, seven in Limerick, and the rest of the cases are in Clare, Cork, Galway, Kerry and Wicklow.
Speaking this evening, Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn said he was concerned that "the message around physical distancing was getting lost".
In relation to social distancing, @ronan_glynn says he is "concerned that that particular part of the message is getting lost" | https://t.co/JohvUoHN0u pic.twitter.com/YPs7eOqoZu
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 10, 2020
"I know that people are travelling across the country, I know people are on holidays, but it's really important they don't drop their guard at this time. Because if they do, what we will see is an increase in cases in two and three weeks' time, at precisely the moment we want to get schools reopened," he said.
He added: "In particular physical distance, I’m concerned that that part of the message is getting lost".
Dr Glynn said he has heard two narratives over the past few days; the first is the blame narrative. He said "there's no blame to be attached to either acquiring or transmitting this disease".
He said the second narrative is "that we're on a course that cannot be altered nationally. That's also not the case".
He said we have seen a substantial increase in the number of cases in Kildare, Laois and Offaly and also nationally, but he said we can take measures now to arrest that.
He said over the past 14 days, 879 cases have been notified, giving a 14-day incidence of 18.5 per 100,000. Of these 879 cases, the median age is 33 years and 73% of cases occurred in those under the age of 45.
He said that if the three counties affected - Laois, Offaly and Kildare - were removed from those statistics, the incidence rate would be just under 10 cases per 100,000 of the population.
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Dr Glynn has said there are going to be "ups and downs over the next week" and it will be next week before they can assess the impact of the measures in Kildare, Laois and Offaly.
However, he said they are seeing "a significant number of cases across other counties over the past 14 days" so it is important that people see the increase across the country as a whole and not just in those counties.
He said while there are no new cases notified in Laois tonight, over the past 14 days, it had 71 cases and its 14-day incidence is 83 cases per 100,000.
.@ronan_glynn says there have been a "significant number" of Covid-19 cases across Ireland in the last 14 days, and not just in counties Kildare, Laois and Offaly | https://t.co/JohvUoHN0u pic.twitter.com/A6Xl2RmLzq
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 10, 2020
He said he hopes there will be days when these three counties have no cases, but it's too early on the basis of one day's reporting to consider that some of these measures could be eased.
He said there are 12 confirmed cases in hospital and seven in ICU.
Dr Glynn said there have been 1,117 deaths associated with outbreaks in residential care facilities to date representing 63% of all deaths to date.
In Northern Ireland, one person diagnosed with the virus has died, bringing the death toll there to 557.
An additional 76 new cases were also confirmed, bringing the overall number of cases in the region to 6,140.
Meanwhile, there has been a small reduction in the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in hospitals in the Republic, down from 14 to 12, according to the latest figures from the Health Service Executive.
The patients are in eight hospitals - in Kilkenny, the Mater, Tallaght University Hospital, University Hospital Limerick, Beaumont, Cavan, Drogheda and Naas.
There are 43 intensive care beds free in the public hospital system.
There are also 113 suspected cases of the virus in hospitals being treated, with eight of these suspected cases in ICU.
The World Health Organization says data to date suggests 80% of Covid-19 infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical, requiring ventilation.
Generally, you need to be 15 minutes or more in the vicinity of an infected person and within two metres of them, to be considered at-risk, or a close contact.
