By Reuters New measures to help protect residents in Irish nursing homes from the coronavirus are not being implemented fast enough, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said as his acting government faced criticism for the speed of its response. Ireland has reported 444 coronavirus-related deaths from a total 12,547 cases, with 245 fatalities associated with nursing homes and 45 more with other care homes. There are clusters of two or more cases in 155 of the country’s 550 retirement homes. Eight people or almost a third of residents at one old age psychiatric home who had tested positive COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, died over the Easter holiday weekend, Ireland’s Health Service Executive said on Wednesday. The government promised nursing homes additional funds, more staff, priority testing and the redeployment of senior medics to improve infectious disease control on April 4 after the number of clusters began to rise rapidly. “That is all happening but it isn’t happening as much as we’d like it to or as quickly as we would like it to and that is just a reflection of the scale of the crisis,” Varadkar told parliament. “Today the frontline of this emergency is not just in our hospitals, but also in out nursing homes and our longterm care homes. I know in some countries care homes have been described as the forgotten front line. We need to make sure in this country they are not the forgotten front line.” Opposition politicians said emergency measures to prepare hospitals for a surge in cases - which has yet to happen due to a stabilisation in critical care patients - were not extended to nursing homes. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, who is in negotiations to form a new government with Varadkar, said nursing homes had been “left behind significantly.” Health officials across the world have warned that the elderly are especially vulnerable in the pandemic. The median age of deaths in Ireland is 82, compared to a median age of 48 of all those infected, according to health department data. Varadkar extended stay-at-home restrictions last week until May 5 and said on Thursday that ideally he would like to be able set out a roadmap towards easing the restrictions “in very clear steps” before the end of the month or prior to May 5. “I don’t yet know if we’ll be able to relax restrictions on May 5, but I do know that if we can at all, it is going to be gradual and happen over a number of months,” he said.