Nine more weeks of ‘severe lockdown’, confirms Taoiseach Micheal Martin

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that the “severe” lockdown restrictions will remain in place for at least another nine weeks, until the end of April.

In an exclusive interview with the Irish Mirror, Mr. Martin indicated that the reopening of pubs and restaurants, and personal services such as hair salons, may remain closed well beyond this date.

He said there will not be a full return to the construction sector by March 5, even though it was proposed by Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien.

Children returning to school in stages, beginning with third and fourth year infants and Leaving Cert students is the priority.

However, he said there is light ahead for people with expected 1.2 million monthly vaccine doses, saying: “It’s going to be a challenge for people, it’s already been a prolonged lockdown and I’d tell you it’s worth it … “

Speaking in government buildings on Thursday, Martin said that when the government unveils its revised Living with Covid plan next week, there will be very little change on March 5.

He said: “What will happen next will be modest, I would not exaggerate it in the sense of announcements, etc.

“We are seeing a continuation of severe restrictions certainly through April.

“We will take a look at construction but again it will not be a full return to construction, we will assess what the public health council is.

“Certainly we have already indicated that beyond Easter we will see it again, but until the end of April we can see important restrictions and then we will review it because we will have to see where we are.”

The Taoiseach was not used when personal services, such as when barber shops reopened, but he indicated that the industry could possibly be closed for an extended period after April.

He said: “We have to take it in phases, we cannot project the full year, it would be dishonest to try to do that with Covid-19.

“That said, we understand where personal services come in as a sector and that is something we would like to be looking at at some point, but we want vaccines to be made.

“So I think we’ll see all of that sometime towards the end of the second quarter, if not before.”

When he asked him that it would be the end of June, he added: “No, I’m not going to put that date. Ronan Glynn (Deputy Medical Director) and we discussed beyond April, you can’t really predict. “

He said: “Things are difficult and challenging.

“It has already been a long lockdown and I would tell people that it is worth it because we know that vaccines are coming out and we already see that vaccines are improving the situation in our hospitals and nursing homes because the disease is going down in both places, which is indicative of the vaccination program. “

The Taoiseach said that exiting this lockdown will not be the same as reopening after previous lockdowns.

This is due to a number of factors, including a “highly transmissible and more dangerous” variant of the virus and the launch of the vaccine.

He said: “The public health wants to know as we reopen, what is the impact of the reopening on the spread of the disease given the variant … the British variant accounts for 90% of all cases.

“So once we get back the first few years [to school], they want to evaluate that over a period of two weeks.

“What has been the impact of the immobilization of so many people on the spread of the virus?”

Mr. Martin said that additional supports will be provided to the hospitality and tourism industries once we “get out of Covid-19.”

He said: “The most effective way to do it economically and for the esthetician and innkeeper who works in a bar or pub is to defeat the virus.

“The most effective way we can do it is through restrictions on how long we can maintain it, along with the deployment of vaccination, there is no other easy way against Covid-19.

“I think we will be able to evaluate this, we cannot make definitive projections now in February over next July, we just cannot do it because we have already learned about the variant of how it changes.

“And there are concerns across Europe as the ECDC said about new variants and how Covid-19 may mutate in the future, so we need to be very vigilant about that and we will.

“That said, I think that by the end of June we will be in a much better place as a country and we will be in a position to make different decisions than we can make now.”

Mr. Martin said that “we need a reality check here” as there are still a significant number of people in the ICU and hospital with the disease and “we cannot just open up again and put more pressure on workers in first-line health ”.

But he offered some hope by stating that the vaccine was “the light at the end of the tunnel and vaccines will allow us to have a better quality of life.”

He said the government is testing 1.2 million doses of vaccines per month for April, May and June.

He said: “A combination of more Pfizer / BioNTech volumes, more Modern, less AstraZeneca and then Johnson and Johsnon, so a combination of all of them together gives us about 1.2 million per month, everything is going well now, there is no interruptions.

“So push that through to the end of June and you’re seeing potentially up to a million and a half people on the full dose.

“We will be over 70, the two doses will be made in mid-May, so that means that the cohort of the population at greatest risk will have been vaccinated and that is good for us.

“The target date is that by September we will have the majority of the population vaccinated.

“We are vaccinating as soon as the vaccines arrive in the country and we cannot do more than that.”