LAST UPDATE | 14 May 2020

TODAY, THE NATIONAL Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) will brief the government on its advice on whether Phase One will be lifted on Monday.

On Friday, Cabinet ministers will then meet to discuss this advice, before the Taoiseach announces the detail of what is to happen from Monday.

Despite cautious warnings that the public should not get complacent, the key indicators of how countries are handling the crisis have offered hope: the reproduction number has fallen well below R1; ICU admissions are falling, and testing is being sped up (though it still isn’t where it should be).

Here are today’s main Covid-19 points:  

• Ten deaths were announced yesterday, and 159 new cases. That brings the total to 1,497 deaths, and 23,401 confirmed Covid-19 cases.
• The HSE said it aims to get the turnaround time, from swab to test result, down to two days, and that the ‘end-to-end’ turnaround time in 90% of cases was down to 3 days. 
• The government scrapped plans to provide childcare to healthcare workers during Covid-19 due to poor uptake by providers.
• Garda management has written to the Data Protection Commissioner as well as several social media companies over online videos showing Garda members being verbally abused while at Covid-19 checkpoints.
• Dubliners are being asked to submit items like photos and artwork that represents their Covid-19 lockdown lives to be archived by the Dublin City Library.

Here are today’s international Covid-19 points:

• An antibodies test, or a test to find out whether people have been infected with coronavirus in the past, has been approved by health officials in England.
• US President Donald Trump has said calls by the country’s top medical advisor Anthony Fauci for a highly cautious lifting of pandemic restrictions are “not acceptable.”
• The coronavirus outbreak risks sparking a major global mental health crisis, the United Nations has warned, calling for urgent action to address the psychological suffering brought on by the pandemic.
• Vaccinating 3.7 billion people, the poorest half of the global population, against Covid-19 could cost less than the amount of money made by the 10 biggest pharmaceutical companies in four months, Oxfam has said.