The Cabinet sub-committee on Covid-19 will meet later to finalise the government’s new ‘Living with Covid’ plan.
The new strategy is due to be published tomorrow, and will set out five levels of restrictions for the next six to nine months.
It’s understood Dublin could face higher levels of restriction under the plan, due to the levels of the virus in the capital.
255 new cases were confirmed yesterday, 156 of those in Dublin, with one more death. The rest of the new instances were recorded across the country, including ‘less than five’ in Carlow & no increases in Kilkenny.
Covid-19 Lead at the Irish College of General Practitioners, Dr. Nuala O’Connor, says the new measures could be with us for a very long time, noting “So we know what we can do safely but we just wanted to try to work within those safe limits because until we get an effective vaccine or an effective treatment the world is going to be living with this virus for some time to come yet & we have to get back on with living our lives, educating our children, getting the economy going”.
She adds that the new plan will be important saying “As the course of this virus changes, as new evidence emerges so we’re not sure exactly the way the world is going to look in six months time but this will attempt to give people a more structured way that they can see the steps & the measures that might need to be taken depending on the course or trajectory of the virus in the next couple of months”.
Elsewhere, people in the UK could be fined from today if they meet socially in a group of more than 6 people.
The restrictions differ slightly in different parts.
Children aren’t included in the total in Scotland and Wales, but are in England.
Repeat offenders face penalties of up to 3-thousand 200 pounds.
While Israel will become the first country to re-impose a nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus.
The country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says from Friday, restrictions on schools, restaurants and hotels will be in place for at least another three weeks.
More than 150-thousand cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed there, with more than 11-hundred recorded deaths.
