Coalition party leaders will meet today for talks on plans for what restrictions will be in place over Christmas.
Yesterday officials confirmed one further death of a patient with the virus with 318 cases of Covid-19, less than five each in Carlow & Kilkenny.
Dublin, Cork and Limerick saw the highest numbers of new cases, though the national infection rate has continued to fall.
There were 5,193 new infections in the last fortnight, or 109 per hundred thousand people – 138 of them locally.
Professor Gerry Killeen, a virus expert in UCC, says the downward trend is welcome, but the danger has not left us.
Travel
More than four in ten Irish people polled in the UK say they’ll be coming home for Christmas.
38% in other parts of Europe plan to travel back, along with 36% of those in the Middle East.
If not for the pandemic, 84% of Irish people abroad would have returned, but this year just three in ten will.
Colin Donnery, chief executive of FRS Recruitment, says ex-pats in Britain seem to be most eager to come home.
Sanitiser
The HSE didn’t recall the ViraPro hand sanitiser until two weeks after it was informed there was a problem.
It was advised by the Department of Agriculture there was an issue on October 7th and it recalled the product on the 23rd of that month.
The HSE says the recall didn’t happen until test results on samples were available.
Elsewhere
People in the North could be allowed cross the border to spend Christmas with family in the Republic.
Britain’s Cabinet Office Minister and the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland met today to discuss pandemic plans for the season.
They’re aiming to ease restrictions across all parts of the UK for a few days to allow more household bubbling.
Discussions are to continue with the Irish government on cross-border travel.
In the UK, Boris Johnson is facing a growing rebellion over plans to replace the current lockdown in England with a tougher three tier system.
The “Covid Recovery Group” of backbench Conservative MPs have written to the British Prime Minister calling for a cost and benefit analysis.
