Minister of Health Simon Harris expressed hope there could be some relaxation of the measures after an initial two-week period of enforcement, but he warned that life will not be returning to normal in the short term.
He said admissions to intensive care units are expected to rise significantly over the next week with people already infected with Covid-19.
“But we would expect, and our medical advisers would expect, that these measures that we’ve put in place could start to slow down that curve in about 10 days to two weeks, that’s what we’re working towards,” he told RTE Radio One.
Will we be in a position on the 12th of April where life in Ireland will return to normal? Absolutely not and let’s be honest with each other.
“And these are measures that we’re going to need to continue to work on."
He admitted however that the restrictions will not be sustainable for a long period.
“Do we hope to be in a position in two weeks’ time to say that we’ve made progress and some of the measures can be tweaked, removed, changed? Absolutely.
“The measures that we put in place last night are so significant that they cannot be kept in place for too long.
“You cannot ask people to sustain this for a very long period. That’s why we are really asking people to double down now for the next two weeks, it’s going to be tough.”
“But we do have to strip back all of the noise and actually remind each other what we’re trying to do here, we’re trying to keep each other alive and we’re trying to make sure we don’t go the way that some other European countries have done,” he said.
“When we look back on this, and we will look back at this at some point and we will get through this at some point, we want to be able to say that the measures we all took together were really tough but helped keep people alive and well.”
