Ireland must cut coronavirus case growth rate to 5%, PM says

The progress Ireland has made to lower the daily rate of increase in coronavirus cases to 10% is definitely not enough and needs to be reduced to 5% to control the spread of the illness, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Thursday.

Ireland reported 402 new cases to bring the total to 3,849 with 98 deaths and 109 patients in intensive care units (ICU).

Varadkar said the health service has the capacity to ventilate 1,200 people in wards as well as ICUs but needed to train more staff to use the increasing supply of ventilators.