Covid-19: Health Minister says next three weeks 'incredibly important'
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said that the next three weeks will be “incredibly important” and that there needs to be “the same intensity of focus” that there was in the early months of living with the virus.
Mr Donnelly said that this week there will be a review of testing and turn-around times and there will a review of foreign travel and an expert report on nursing homes which will contain 86 recommendations.
“We’ve got to listen to the doctors,” he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
At present there has been no conversation about extending restrictions to other counties and the plan is for restrictions in Laois, Offaly and Kildare to be lifted at midnight on Sunday night.
“That’s still the plan.”
The Minister pointed out that elsewhere in Europe when restrictions were relaxed there had been a spike in cases.
He said that “thankfully” the number of hospitalisations, the number of Covid patients in ICU and the number of fatalities was low, this was possibly because the median age of patients was young.
However, he warned that there could be a time lapse between cases being identified and being hospitalised.