Measures are working, but more time needed to suppress virus Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said the Level 5 Covid-19 restrictions are working, but we need to keep them in place for longer to suppress the spread of the coronavirus.
He said we don't need to focus on new measures, but to keep the focus on the measures we know work. The new strain of the virus is more transmissible, he said, but it doesn't have new ways of transmitting, so the existing measures are sufficient if they are properly observed. R number falls below 1 Chair of the Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group Professor Philip Nolan said the R number is now below one.