10-new-covid-19-cases-confirmed-bringing-total-on-island-of-ireland-to-50.jpg

The number of patients in hospital with confirmed or suspected cases of Covid-19 has dropped again in the last 24 hours.

There were 950 people hospitalised on Saturday night but this has reduced to 900 as of Sunday night.

And the number of confirmed patients in intensive care continues to decline from a peak of 160 people last month.

93 patients were in intensive care with confirmed cases of the disease.

Two patients had died in the previous 24 hours and there were 20 suspected cases in ICU.

The Minister for Health, Simon Harris and the Chief Executive of the HSE, Paul Reid, welcomed the positive trends in the number of hospitalisations and ICU admissions, but the Minister warned the progress being made was fragile.

The highest number of cases is in the Mater hospital in Dublin, which has 92 confirmed cases.

Outside the Dublin hospitals, Limerick with 46 and Mayo with 34 have the most confirmed cases.

The HSE says it intends to use private hospital capacity to deal with people waiting for treatment for other conditions, starting with those who need the most urgent treatment.

It also says it will be able to test 100,000 people a week for Covid-19 by 18 May and will have a three day turnaround between referral and results.