The daily release of new COVID-19 figures in Ireland is causing "huge anxiety" for some people, a Dublin GP has said.
Dr Maitiú Ó Tuathail, the former president of the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP), said the nightly numbers should be released weekly or bi-weekly instead.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, Dr Ó Tuathail said we would be living with COVID-19 for another two to four years.
He said: "I think what's happening at the moment as a nation is we're on an emotional rollercoaster of COVID-19 figures.
"I described it yesterday as a self-perpetuating of cycle misery.
"When the cases are high, people are generally frightened and anxious, and when the cases are low, it's falsely reassuring people.
"Because of the way we report the figures as numbers with no real context, they are completely meaningless."
He suggested it would be better to issue weekly or bi-weekly figures "with a huge amount of context in the information".
He said the figures could be published daily on the HSE website for those interested in reading them.
Dr Ó Tuathail said: "It's the media and social media storm that follows every single day at six o'clock that I see as a GP as causing huge anxiety."
There are another group, however, who have become desensitized to the number of new cases each day.
He added: "There's a huge proportion of society that have now become completely desensitized.
"There's one portion, who I'm seeing, of older people for whom the constant release of figures leads to huge anxiety.
"Then there's another group who gets these updates every day on their phones have completely desensitized to it and are switching off.
"At least if we could do it once or twice a week we wouldn't be overloading people.
Dr Ó Tuathail said that people should not let the fluctuating number of new cases influence people's actions.
He said: "The message from Ronan Glynn has been really clear, what we need to assume is that everyone we interact with has COVID and it is widely circulating."
Earlier this week, Newstalk presenter Dr Ciara Kelly said the daily reports were frightening people and that "the narrative around COVID-19 needs to move on".
