The Taoiseach says he'd be surprised if there were fewer than one-thousand deaths from Covid 19 in Ireland.
The death toll has reached 19, and Leo Varadkar says his thoughts are with the families of the 10 people who passed away yesterday.
The country's top health officials are meeting this afternoon to discuss Ireland's response.
Leo Varadkar says we're still at the start of the pandemic, and there'll be many more deaths linked to the coronavirus:
"If you take the average flu season in Ireland there'd be roughly 500 deaths. If you take a bad flu season in Ireland there'd be roughly a thousand deaths. So it would be a surprise and a very pleasant surprise if the number of deaths at the end of this is less than a thousand, given that in a bad flu season it's a thousand".
"But it's impossible to predict at this stage, that's just a rough idea of what we may be in for".
