Cabinet ministers will decide this morning whether all passengers arriving into Ireland should need to have a negative Covid test.
Public Health officials made the recommendation last night, after updating government party leaders on the Omicron variant.
The measures are expected to apply to all flights and ferries into Ireland, including from Great Britain.
New advice for children over-9 to wear masks in shops, at school, and while on public transport will also be considered by ministers at today’s meeting.
A Professor of Genetics at Trinity College says the real danger from Omicron is that our Covid numbers are already so high.
Professor Aoife McLysaght is also a member of the Independent Scientific Advisory Group who argue to Covid elimination.
She’s been telling The Way it is on KCLR that it’s our current level of infection that makes a new strain so dangerous:
“Even before the news of this new variant we weren’t in great shape anyway. You know, we were in a situation where we had really, really high case numbers, and they’re going up. So that’s one thing to think about. The thing that makes this one then even additionally more worrying is that we’re seeing at the moment that our booster programme is working, our vaccination programme is working – it’s protecting the most vulnerable. Is that protection then somehow diminished now, not eliminated, but diminished”
