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Home visits will be limited to one other home as of Dec. 27, the cabinet agreed.
However, effective January 1, domestic mixing will not be allowed except for compassionate reasons.
Inter-county travel will be banned after St. Stephen’s Day and the ban on travel to and from Britain will run until December 31.
Non-essential retail stores will remain open, however hair salons, barbers, gourmet pubs, and restaurants will close at 3pm on Christmas Eve.
Gyms may remain open for individual training.
Weddings will be reduced to six people and hotels will not be open for non-essential reservations after December 26.
Sources say people can travel beyond their county until the end of Stephen’s day. People can stay where they are at that stage and travel back at their own pace after their visit, but with no new inter-county travel after that.
The Cabinet gathered for a morning meeting at Dublin Castle after a dire warning from the Medical Director, Dr. Tony Holohan, last night.
Dr Holohan told the three party leaders that Ireland will need to return to Level 5 restrictions after Christmas due to the exponential increase in cases and concerns that a new, more transmissible strain of Covid19 has arrived in Ireland.
Christmas religious services may take place, but services will move online after December 25. Churches will remain open for private prayer.
The restrictions will be reviewed on January 12.
Covid19 figures for today are expected to be above 900 in terms of new cases expected tonight.
One minister said the mood in the cabinet was: “Very gloomy and had a concerned tone and projections.”
One minister told the examiner “this is the most serious challenge we have faced since March.”
“Basically a situation has been described to us that has a greater growth than in October, but the critical difference is that we are seeing greater growth in the elderly, in October we saw cases among the youngest.
“It was very gloomy, worried and worried.
“Now we have a worrying increase in people over 65, it is an October number with an age profile of March.
“We do not know if the new strain is here, we have to show off and act as if it were because the cases are increasing exponentially, three days ago we had 500, tonight it will not be far from 1000, tomorrow it will be 1000 or more.” . “
It is understood that no one descended during the cabinet meeting on the stocking restrictions due to “the severity of the restrictions.”
“The general opinion was that we had to go with this and maybe change the restrictions on January 12th.
“I think we are seeing that the entire month of January and February will have the same restrictions announced today.”
The cabinet received good news that vaccines for Covid-19 will arrive on Saint Stephen’s Day, and we will begin vaccinating people on December 30.
From the first week of January, 40,000 vaccines a week will arrive to vaccinate 20,000 people a week.
Ireland only has 30,000 in nursing homes, added the minister: “We are going to have a very precarious and dangerous January and February, but we could see a very different picture after February.”
The cabinet will meet again next Tuesday.
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