LAST UPDATE | 17 Aug 2020

HEALTH MINISTER STEPHEN Donnelly said that there are no plans to extend restrictions imposed in Kildare, Laois and Offaly to other counties, after over 1,000 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the past two weeks.

The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) are due to meet today to discuss the current incidence rate in Ireland, with 200 cases reported on Saturday. There were 66 cases confirmed yesterday.

Addressing the increase in cases, Donnelly told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the number of people with Covid-19 being treated in hospitals and ICUs, although low, had doubled over the weekend.

When asked whether current restrictions in place in counties Kildare, Laois and Offaly could be extended to other counties, Donnelly said that “nothing like that is being proposed at the moment”.

“I have had no conversation with any of the public health doctors about restrictions in other counties… There have been no conversations like that.

The plan is for the current restrictions in the three affected counties to be lifted at midnight on Sunday, and that’s still the intention. 

Donnelly said that the next three weeks would be incredibly important, and that the public health doctors would be monitoring the situation closely.

The biweekly Covid-19 press briefing held at the Department of Health has been postponed today due to meeting of the NPHET. They are usually held every Monday and Thursday; the next Department of Health briefing is this Thursday, 20 August.

Pubs

In response to footage of public health guidelines being flouted at the Dublin bar Berlin D2 over the weekend, Donnelly said that the incident was “a slap in the face for everyone who is working so hard to suppress the virus”.

He said that Gardaí are examining the incident and it will be left to them whether a file is prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions. 

We are in the middle of a global pandemic and we are fighting a virus that kills people. There is a lot at stake, the opening of schools is at stake, the resumption of health services is at stake.

An earlier version of this article reported the minister’s remarks that gardaí had visited over 6,000 premises at the weekend and found 26 that were non-compliant. A spokesperson for the minister later confirmed that he had accidentally referred to figures from a previous weekend; figures for last weekend aren’t yet available.