Nearly 30% of Irish people have delayed seeking medical care in the last month, new figures have revealed.
And women are significantly more likely to put off getting medical attention as the country continues to battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a survey carried out on behalf of the Department of Health, 28% of the population say they have delayed seeking medical care in the last month.
Women are significantly more likely than men to have delayed seeking medical attention (34% vs 21%) and fear of potential infection is the main reason for that.
This is especially true for women (59%) and under 35s (63%).
However on a positive note, the percentage of people behaving safely continues to rise for behaviours such as washing hands (94%), using sanitiser (92%) and coughing into their elbow (77%).
Medical chiefs have previously expressed their concern about the unusually large drop in the number of patients in emergency departments and seeing their GP.
Health Minister Simon Harris has said the reproductive rate for Covid-19 has dropped to between 0.7 and one and there has been a "plateau" in the number of hospital admissions.
Mr Harris told the Dail today: "We now have four different methods to investigate the R. They are suggesting that the R is now between 0.7 and one. That is some encouraging news.
"It looks like we are beginning to see that as a plateau in the hospitalisation cases and critical care cases, but not any manner or means a decline in new cases.
"If our epidemic had have continued at an R of 2.4, then we would have seen 7,800 new cases today, 800 cases in ICU today, and at least 1,700deaths by this day next week."
