A live feed reports encouraging news from Ireland. It is important not to be chicken-counting, but with luck this will continue.

Let us also hope the UK can report similar things soon.

======
Encouraging news from Ireland: the daily growth rate in confirmed cases of coronavirus has halved and the country appears to have avoided an unmitigated epidemic.

Restrictions on social and commercial life and other measures have had an “enormous” impact, Philip Nolan, the Chair of The Irish Epidemiological Modelling Group, told a media briefing.

“The measures that the state has imposed and that the public have really complied with very, very strongly are having an enormous effect on the number of actual cases that we’re seeing today.”

However Nolan warned against complacency and said Covid-19’s growth rate would have to fall to “close to zero” for it to be suppressed.

The chief medical officer, Tony Holohan, agreed Ireland was seeing “encouraging signs” in the effort to flatten the curve but said the number of cases and admissions to intensive care units continued to rise, putting hospitals at risk of being swamped. Officials are especially concerned about clusters in nursing homes and hospitals.

Ireland on Monday confirmed 295 new cases, the second highest daily number, bringing the total to 2,910. It recorded eight deaths, bringing the death toll to 54. Northern Ireland has 533 confirmed cases and 22 deaths.