Relaxation of Restrictions, Part XII *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

11:30 includes a half hour drink-up time so effectively it's gone from 11:00 last orders to 12:30 at the weekends, and most places pushed the 12:30 out to about 12:45 or 1am, I hope to see that make a comeback

They want nightclubs to open so that they can that they allowed them to as per the plan. How they did so doesn't really matter and they popped into a local creche to canvass the rules!

Anyone have a quick run down of what restriction are lifted in pubs & night clubs ?

Pubs - table capacity moving from 6 to 10 and normal trading hours to resume. All other restrictions remain (i.e. masks when moving around, no bar service, covid pass and ID to enter etc).

Clubs - nobody has any fuking idea.

Well Aldi where I live do. They're a fiver each or five tests for €20 iirc. By the tills. I didn't buy any because I already ordered a big batch online, but they were definitely there.

Pretty sure you'll find anything that's in Lidl in Aldi a week later. 😂

Pubs will never be the same again willt hey,

The whole enjoyment of a pub is going to socialise, meet & char with people you don't expect to see there

There's nothing that would motivate you to leave your own home for a drink with the restrictions ,

Its all very confusing tbh..............As per usual! Can someone tell me please, can I go to a fully seated Music event this Friday if I and everyone there have a vaccine passport? Will the event go ahead at full capacity in this circumstance? Because if not, the agent will pull the show..........

I am going to 'The Stunning' and has already been resheduled 5 times! I thought this would be it though

The devil's in the detail here.

Because there aren't just 11 ICU beds available in the whole country. As of last night there were 13 ICU beds staffed and open. That is, ready and waiting to take a patient.

This is not abnormal, ICU beds tend to operate on a logistical basis. After all, if we had 100 ICU beds sitting open and staffed but unused, there'd be widespread wailing about wastage.

If you go back and review the HSE dashboard from previous surges, you can see the full picture. The baseline capacity in ICU is about 300 beds. As of last night, about 8 of them were closed for whatever reason, and there were 13 sitting unused.

So the number of available beds is about 21. And that's just the "right now" capacity. There is surge capacity available that can provide another ~70 ICU beds within a couple of hours.

Yes, there are 74 covid patients in beds that can't now be used for other things, but at this time of the year there's a good chance they'd be mostly 'flu or other respiratory disease patients anyway. There is no 'flu at the moment.

The hospitals are not bursting at the seams any more than they would typically be. "Precarious" may be an appropriate term, but we're a very long way from "struggling to cope".

NPHET are advising caution on the basis that we will consume that surge capacity in the next ~6 weeks, but ICU numbers basically haven't changed at all in the last ten days. They'd nearly want to be praying for that to change or they're going to look ridiculous.

My local Super Valu has them now, 5.99 for a single test. Also have seen them in large Applegreens.

Yeah, have tickets for standing for that gig as well, nothing on the Olympia website, or ticketmaster as to whether its cancelled, i presume it is.

For those asking questions about the nightclubs they basically laughed and said "of course you will be able to dance in a nightclub" but gave no other details about obviously the face there won't be bar service there and said specific info will follow.

I assume this means the full capacity standing concerts that are scheduled this weekend are now off.

I see many saying they don't mind table service forever in pubs - i don't mind the act of actually being served rather than getting my pint at the bar, it's more the spontaneous pint going in somewhere for a match or something in town and sitting where I want rather than this big song and dance of you going in and then putting you at some 6 seater table like an eejit instead of the bar counter etc. My brother tried to go into a live music bar last weekend with just 2 of them and they were refused as they didn't want to waste a 4 seater table on them and said come back if they've 4.