Nearly a thousand positive tests for coronavirus were reported last night, bringing the total number of cases in here to 10,647.
31 more patients have died and six more have died in the North.
527 new cases have been confirmed here and another 465 older cases by a lab in Germany.
There have now been 365 Covid-19 related deaths in Irelan
Chief medical officer Tony Holohan says until a vaccine is mass-produced, there will still be social distancing.
“Once we identify an effective vaccine, or a number of effective vaccines, the manufacturing of those and distribution of those - all of that is going to take time," he said.
“It is going to take time.
“And for that period of time, we are going to be dealing with restrictions of one kind or another.
“The work that we are doing, literally at this moment, in these couple of weeks between now and the 5th of May, is to try to identify what in fact those measures might be.”
Health minister Simon Harris said a briefing yesterday that life could not quickly go back to normal.
“There isn’t going to be a magic point at the start of May where life as we knew it before the coronavirus can resume. I think, being truthful, social distancing is going to remain a very big part of life — not just in Ireland but the world over — until we get to a vaccine or an effective treatment for the coronavirus,” he said.
Mr Harris cited modelling which projected that Ireland would have had 120,000 new cases of the virus in just one day next Sunday if the Government had failed to implement severe restrictions on movement.
Meanwhile, an online dashboard that tracks the global number of confirmed coronavirus cases, maintained by Johns Hopkins University, showed the number of cases passing 2,000,000 in the early hours of Tuesday.
The site was later adjusted to show 1.9 million cases worldwide, with the reasons for the change not immediately clear.
Many parts of the world have had heavy restrictions on freedom of movement to combat Covid-19, and officials around the world are worried that halting quarantine and social-distancing measures could easily undo the hard-earned progress.
However, there were signs countries were looking in that direction.
Spain permitted some workers to return to their jobs, while a hard-hit region of Italy loosened its lockdown restrictions.
- additional reporting by PA
The current restrictions started on Friday, March 27. They mandate that everyone should stay at home, only leaving to:
- Shop for essential food and household goods;
- Attend medical appointments, collect medicine or other health products;
- Care for children, older people or other vulnerable people - this excludes social family visits;
- Exercise outdoors - within 2kms of your home and only with members of your own household, keeping 2 metres distance between you and other people
- Travel to work if you provide an essential service - be sure to practice physical distancing
