The growth rate of new coronavirus cases reported here has almost halved from a fortnight ago.
However, Ireland has yet to see results from the tightened coronavirus restrictions announced last Friday.
That is according to Professor Phillip Nolan, chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (IEMAG).
He says the next seven days are vital to see if we can contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Some 2,910 people now have COVID-19 here and 54 people have lost their lives.
New figures suggest we are flattening the curve, as the daily growth of cases has decreased from 33% on St Patrick's week to around 15% now.
"So, that the measures that the State has imposed... are having an enormous effect on the number of actual cases that we are seeing now today." @President_MU at last night's #COVID19 press conference. #CoronavirusIreland #Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/9HFHH49SHw
— Newstalk (@NewstalkFM) March 31, 2020
But Professor Nolan told Newstalk Breakfast we cannot become complacent.
"The analysis that we're doing at the moment shows there is a very clear impact of the public health measures that we've taken to date on the spread of the coronavirus.
"The key piece of evidence for that is, going back to St Patrick's week, the growth rate in the reported cases day on day was around 33%.
"So every day we were seeing 33% more cases than the previous day".
"Looking back over the last week, that growth rate is down much closer to 15%.
"And that's a testament to how serious the people of the country have treated the public health advice and the public health measures imposed."
"However we have to cautious, it is early days - but we also know that that's not going to be enough to contain the spread of the disease to manageable levels."
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He says it takes between seven and 14 days to see the full impact of any public health measures that are implimented.
"Right now we're seeing the impact of the early measures - school closures, university closures, the first set of distancing measures.
"We're not going to see last Friday's very strong interventions - we're not going to see the impact of those - until towards the end of this week and out into next week".
"The message to the public is to maintain those efforts around their own hygiene, stay at home and if you think you have this disease to self-isolate immediately".
