Minister for Health Simon Harris has told the Dáil that the reproductive rate for the Covid-19 virus in Ireland has fallen again and that the average person who gets infected now will pass the virus on to no more than one other person at most.
The reproductive rate of the virus, the minister said, is down now to between 0.5 and 1, from 0.7 to 1 just one week ago according to the mathematical model of the pandemic used to inform the workings of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET).
The minister also revealed that the number of people being admitted to hospital with Covid-19 infections has fallen by 60% since the start of April.
It is down from an average of 100 hospital admissions per day to an average of 40 patients per day admitted with the virus.
Minister Harris appealed for people not to give up when we are starting to see that what we are doing is working and is saving lives.
Mr Harris said: "This progress is a tribute to the solidarity of the Irish people. However, this number is not static.
"We have achieved this progress by staying apart and we need to continue to keep that distance. If we continue, we will suppress this disease even more.
"We must not give up when we are starting to see that what we are doing is working and is saving lives."
Fianna Fáil health spokesperson Stephen Donnelly has said nursing homes are "desperately" short of staff and personal protection equipment.
He said this had happened because nursing homes did not have a voice with Government or with NPHET when this crisis began to move through the country.
Mr Donnelly said the Government's Covid-19 action plan from mid-March only mentions nursing homes once.
He said according to the minutes available, the first time nursing homes were mentioned by NPHET was at their 12th meeting on 10 March.
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The minister said he "shudders to think" what the situation would be like in long-term residential care facilities had we not managed to flatten the curve in the community.
He said that nursing homes do have a seat at the table of NPHET and he said it was HIQA who sets the standards in these homes.
The minister said it was appropriate that we listen to Nursing Homes Ireland and he said he was now meeting them twice a week.
He said he was looking at other ways to involve them in the decision making process.
Minister Harris said he does not attend NPHET because he said that would not be appropriate.
He also said that on 19 February before there was a case of Covid-19 here, there was a meeting by the head of the HSE with Nursing Homes Ireland to discuss their Covid preparedness.
Sinn Féin's Health spokesperson Louise O'Reilly has said that the nursing homes sector is having severe difficulty recruiting and retaining staff.
She told the Dáil that in a survey of 252 nursing homes, there are over 1,000 vacancies and 330 of these are for nurses.
Ms O'Reilly said there has been further pressure on recruitment caused by the failure to address the childcare needs of healthcare workers.
She said the proposals made by Government yesterday were "functionally" useless to the vast majority of people.
Contact tracing was raised in the Dáil by the Green Party's health spokesperson.
Ossian Smyth said effective contact tracing was needed in order to move on and ease restrictions.
