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The entire country has been ordered to stay at home for the next weeks, Leo Varadkar has announced.

Ireland is now in full lockdown as all non-essential trips are banned from midnight, with the Taoiseach saying the measures will stay in place until Easter Sunday, April 12.

The only exceptions are for travelling to essential work, to shop for food or household goods, for healthcare appointments, and for vital family reasons.

People will also be allowed out for brief exercise within 2km of their own home, as well as for farming purposes and food production. All public gatherings outside a family household or single unit have also now been prohibited.

The news was confirmed at a media briefing held by the Government in Dublin this evening, and follows another shocking and sad day which say three more deaths announced and another 302 cases of coronavirus confirmed.

The Taoiseach, Health Minister Simon Harris and Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan addressed reporters at the press conference.

It comes after Varadkar has said earlier today that he would be “pleasantly surprised” if the coronavirus death toll was only 1,000 Irish people.

The Taoiseach was speaking at a food warehouse in Dublin this afternoon where he also said that the country’s Intensive Care Units (ICU) are heading for full capacity within days.

He said: “Take the average flu season in Ireland, there would be roughly 500 deaths.

“If you had a bad flu season in Ireland you would have roughly 1,000 deaths.

“So it would be a surprise and a very pleasant surprise if the number of deaths at the end of it was less than 1,000,”

Mr Varadkar also said that things are going to get “very difficult” in the next few days when capacity is reached in our hospital’s ICUs.

He added: “Just the way things are heading indicate that ICU will be at capacity in a number of days.

“That’s already the case around Europe - it may happen here. We have to plan for that.

“We need to make sure we have capacity, ventilators, all of those things.

“All of that is happening.

“An unprecedented effort is being made by the health service to tool-up, to recruit, to provide additional capacity.

“Just as we are seeing in Europe and in America, as we saw in China, there is not a health service in the world that will be able to tool-up or scale-up as quickly as is necessary.

“We are going to be managing a very difficult situation and everybody will be doing the best they can.”