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There are four counties under consideration for additional lockdown measures, according to the Minister of Health.
Stephen Donnelly, speaking to RTÉ on Sunday, said that while Cork, Wicklow, Galway and Louth have cases steadily increasing, he does not anticipate any announcement to be made before Thursday when the National Public Health Emergency Team will meet.
Donegal and Dublin have received orders to increase local restrictions due to the increase in cases and other counties are expected to follow suit as the country battles a second wave of Covid19.
“There are four counties that I think were looked at very carefully, they are Cork, Galway, Louth and my own County Wicklow,” he said.
“But at this time, there are no plans for NPHET to meet earlier to make recommendations to the government at this time.
“They meet every Thursday, that may change, but right now they have no plans to meet.
“What happens in each case is that the national public health emergency looks at a wide variety of measures.
“They look at not just the 14-day fees, but the seven-day fees, but they look at where it comes from, and is it increasing rapidly? Is it a small number of cases where we have deployed public health on the ground?
“And it’s actually well contained, and so on, so we let the experts come back, examine a wide range of things.”
Donnelly said that while Dublin appears to have hindered its increase in cases through its “local lockdown,” it is too early to tell.
“We will be cautiously optimistic as we always must be, but it is very early, what we want to happen now, this week is for the seven-day rate to go down every day,” he said.
“I have no doubt that people in Dublin have heard this loud and clear in the vast majority of cases, people are doing exactly what they need to do simply by limiting their interactions.”
Donnelly added that she did not anticipate Christmas approaching as is normally planned for many families who have relatives in nursing homes.
“What I would like to see is being able to go in and visit their relatives,” he said.
“It is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking for residents and heartbreaking for family members, heartbreaking for staff who are dealing with this every day, we had so many cases of people on tiptoe looking out of windows and other very sick family members and in some cases they died. .
“So what I really love to see is the suppression of this virus, to the point where it incorporates the most liberal visitation that we could safely have.”
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