Brace for peaks if people ignore social distancing - HSE chief

Paul Reid, CEO, HSE: the new normal in living with the virus will involve “significant peaks and, we hope, significant troughs very soon”.File picture: Sam Boal / Photocall Ireland

The country must brace itself for "significant peaks" in Covid-19 cases, with death rates set to soar if people do not start socially distancing.

Those were the warnings from the two of the country's leading health officials as 164 new cases were confirmed, 93 of them in Dublin.