The laws giving power to Covid restrictions will be allowed lapse on Thursday.
The Government hasn’t sought any extension for the powers with Micheál Martin saying economic restrictions can’t be justified.
He’s faced calls to re-introduce some measures to deal with the rising number of Covid cases but the Taoiseach says those cases are not leading to serious illness.
A local GP says we need to make mask etiquette a social norm to help deal with waves of Covid-19 and other seasonal bugs.
12,508 new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed on Wednesday with 1,610 patients in hospital with the virus – 49 in ICUs.
There’s 31 Covid patients at St Luke’s in Kilkenny with one in the local intensive care unit
Modelling data is predicting a possible peak of 2,200 hospitals cases in the next seven to ten days and a growing number of calls for mandatory mask-wearing to be re-introduced.
Dr Tadhg Crowley says that it’s clear we are no longer taking personal responsibility for wearing masks to slow the spead of the virus so we need to bring that back.
He says we’ll have to get used to masks for future seasonal outbreaks of flu and colds as well as Covid-19.
