Three more deaths and 302 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the Republic of Ireland.
It brings the total number of cases here to 2,121.
The announcement was made by the Department of Health this evening.
One of the patients who died was a person in the north-west of the country, while two were females in the east.
It came after it was confirmed this afternoon a further three patients had sadly passed away in Northern Ireland.
The total number of infections in the North also rose to 34, bringing the total there to 275.
Meanwhile Leo Varadkar has said that he would be “pleasantly surprised” if the coronavirus death toll was only 1,000 Irish people.
The Taoiseach was speaking at a food warehouse in Dublin this afternoon where he also said that the country’s Intensive Care Units (ICU) are heading for full capacity within days.
He said: “Take the average flu season in Ireland, there would be roughly 500 deaths.
“If you had a bad flu season in Ireland you would have roughly 1,000 deaths.
“So it would be a surprise and a very pleasant surprise if the number of deaths at the end of it was less than 1,000,”
Mr Varadkar also said that things are going to get “very difficult” in the next few days when capacity is reached in our hospital’s ICUs.
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He added: “Just the way things are heading indicate that ICU will be at capacity in a number of days.
“That’s already the case around Europe - it may happen here. We have to plan for that.
“We need to make sure we have capacity, ventilators, all of those things.
“All of that is happening.
“An unprecedented effort is being made by the health service to tool-up, to recruit, to provide additional capacity.
“Just as we are seeing in Europe and in America, as we saw in China, there is not a health service in the world that will be able to tool-up or scale-up as quickly as is necessary.
“We are going to be managing a very difficult situation and everybody will be doing the best they can.”
