Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

And government. They are the ones ultimately responsible for increasing restrictions.

We have a dysfunctional political system in Ireland. The opposition are in lock-step with government and NPHET on this and in fact have often called for more restrictions over and above what we have had to deal with for the last 21 months.

People need to switch off from the scare mongering media and get on with things.

There is an unhealthy obsession on these threads of people listening to the media just so they can jump on here and give out about what has been said.

I’m only waiting for some schools not to miss a trick and like what they do with uniforms, the child can only wear a mask with the school crest on it ,which they probably sell for a fiver a pop

some brilliant new restrictions from the government yesterday with apparently more restrictions to be sought from NPHET on Thursday

"Christmas travel plans have been thrown into doubt after the Government introduced strict new rules for international travel.

Tens of thousands of people planning to travel to Ireland over the coming weeks will have to ensure they have a negative Covid-19 test before they leave their country of origin, even if they are vaccinated.

The new rules could leave fully vaccinated passengers stranded in countries to which they travelled if they cannot produce a negative Covid-19 test before returning home.

The Cabinet agreed to review the restrictions after two weeks, but a senior government source said they expected the rules to be place all the way up to Christmas.

“I can’t see us learning enough about Omicron that would reassure us in two or three weeks,” they said.

The Cabinet was briefed on positive indicators on the spread of the virus but was warned that Nphet is likely to recommend more restrictions when it meets tomorrow.

The travel restrictions announced yesterday are among the strictest in Europe, with only Portugal introducing a similar regime. Nphet wanted incoming passengers to be required to produce a negative PCR test taken within the 72 hours before they arrived in Ireland.

However, the Government instead decided to also permit passengers to produce a negative antigen test taken within the 48 hours before their arrival.

Antigen tests must be administered professionally and cannot be home test kits.

Passengers coming into the country who refuse to produce a negative test may face fines, a Government spokesperson said. Some may even face imprisonment as a last resort if they refuse to comply with the new international travel rules.

The Government is also examining possible fines for carriers that do not conduct proper pre-flight checks of passengers to ensure they have their test results.

On arrival in Ireland, there will be “spot checks” by border management units and immigration gardaí. Passengers without a test result or without the correct test will have to quarantine at home and immediately get a PCR test.

Officials were last night drafting new legislation to underpin the travel restrictions for passengers.

This in a country where the new variant is probably here already, the government or any scientists don't know enough about it, the desease is ahead of NPHET predictions yet we have more new restrictions coming in all the time

government also look to reintroduce emergency powers up to March but can be extended until June next year

No doubt they will end up further extending for the whole of next year as well

Well it seems to be gyms and hairdressers on the list so no surprise they will push back. Anything that even looks remotely like a lockdown proposal is not going to to be a runner.

Just a reminder as we enter the dreaded month of December that the projected 200K in new cases is an average of about 6.5K a day and 400K is close to 13K a day.

Yes but the public are ahead of us😀🤣🤣

What were they predicting in respect to hospitalisations and ICU. Surely these are far more important metrics with vaccination coverage and the booster programme.

You might be right but there is a definite creep in more restrictions being added all the time

Well they seem to have ignored boosters completely. IIRC, and someone may have more exact numbers, ICU was projected to top out at 200 and from 800-1,000 for 200K and close to 2,000 for 400K. That's off a hospitalisation rate of 2%-2.5%. Our current trajectory has us heading for about 150K this month, but 71% of those cases are under 45.