Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has praised the public for their resolve in lockdown so far with positive signs beginning to emerge.
The Fine Gael leader took to Twitter to address his followers on the latest Covid-19 situation in Ireland.
Mr Varadkar said: "We are seeing some encouraging signs in the past week or so - the number of cases going down, the positivity rate falling.
"Unfortunately the number of people in ICU and in our hospitals is still increasing at a lower rate.
"So that is encouraging and indicates that the affect of the restrictions is kicking in and of course a lot of that is down to your good efforts as well, and I want to thank you for that."
The Tanaiste did add however that it's not the time for complacency and there is more work to do.
Mr Varadkar added: "We have seen periods in the past though where numbers appear to be going in the right direction for a week or so and then they turned again for the worse.
"So there's no cause for any of us to become complacent, and we all need to continue with that effort for the next couple of weeks."
Speaking on Friday night Professor Philip Nolan said he was able to share positive news for the first time in months.
Prof. Nolan said: “The reproduction number is now close to 1.0 nationally. This is the first time in a number of weeks that we have been able to report positive indicators of the disease.
"However, our experience to date shows this type of progress is very fragile.
"We should take these positive signs as an indication our efforts are starting to work, the critical thing now is to keep it up, the virus will seek out any opportunity to spread; over the next weeks let’s make sure we don’t give it that opportunity, by driving R and case numbers as low as possible.”
