There’s more positive news from Ireland’s hospitals this morning.

The number of people requiring hospital care for Covid-19 has fallen below 200 for the first time in 2021. The HSE reports that, as of 8pm last night, there were 189 confirmed Covid-19 cases on Irish hospital wards.

A further 358 new cases of coronavirus were confirmed nationally in the past 24 hours, with 18 deaths from the virus. Of those deaths, seven occurred in April, three occurred in March, three occurred in February and three occurred in January.

Just five new cases were recorded in Cork, with 166 in Dublin, 39 in Donegal, 16 in Kildare, 13 in Offaly, 12 in Meath, 12 in Limerick and the remaining cases spread across 17 other counties.

While the outlook is good, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn urged the public to avoid mixing indoors with other households and only meet up outdoors with one household at a time.

Dr Glynn also warned that the reopening of school classrooms should not be taken as a signal for adults to return to offices.

“If we can maintain our progress, vaccines and basic public health measures will be our way out of this pandemic,” he said.

Hotel quarantine booking ‘paused’

Meanwhile, The Department of Health and Tifco Hotel Group have agreed to temporarily pause the mandatory hotel quarantine booking portal.

In a statement, a spokesperson said “This has been done as a precautionary measure to enable further assessment of capacity within the mandatory hotel quarantine system for the coming days.

Those who have already made their booking for mandatory hotel quarantine are not affected. Bookings can still be made for dates from Monday 19 April onwards.

The temporary pause will be kept under ongoing review should additional capacity become available.

— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) April 13, 2021

“Those who have already made their booking for mandatory hotel quarantine are not affected. Bookings can still be made for dates from Monday 19 April onwards.”

The temporary pause will be kept under ‘ongoing review’ should additional capacity become available.