THE NUMBER of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units across Ireland has dropped below 100 for the first time in over a month.
According to the latest figures, 98 people are being treated for coronavirus in intensive care units.
A further 184 people are being treated in ICUs for non-COVID-19 issues.
That leaves Ireland with 1,400 general beds and 134 critical care beds available for use.
The President of the Irish College of GPs, Dr Mary Favier, has welcomed the fall in ICU numbers.
"If people spend time in intensive care, whether they have had a serious operation or something has happened to them, it's often only a couple of days, this (coronavirus) can be a couple of weeks,” Dr Favier said.
"So we'd expect there to be quite a substantial lag from the time people get the disease, to being admitted to hospital, to going into intensive care, to being discharged.
"So it is very good that we are starting to see that line starting to come down, because it means that infections of, say, a month ago or six weeks ago were dropping."
There have been more than 21,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the Republic of Ireland.
A total of 1,286 people across the country have so far died from the virus.
