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Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has defended the government’s “differentiated approach” to mandatory quarantine, saying that it made no sense to quarantine everyone arriving in the country in a hotel if they were from a country with low transmission levels.
“Why would you put someone from the Isle of Man in hotel quarantine when there is no Covid there?” he said on RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland.
It made no sense to treat South Africa the same way as Iceland, he said. By the summer there could be “travel bubbles” with some countries that were safe.
The Tánaiste’s comments come a day after the government published a new Covid-19 plan, called Path Ahead, which outlines a cautious approach to breaking out of the lockdown that has been in place since Christmas.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced on Tuesday an extension of the Level 5 restrictions as expected, but promised an acceleration of the vaccination program that would see more than 80 percent of adults receive their first dose by the end of June.
Chief ministers noted Wednesday that further easing of Covid-19 restrictions would be possible in the summer once this vaccination target is reached.
The Minister of Public Expenditure, Michael McGrath, said that vaccination at 80 percent “will have, I think, a very dramatic effect on the level of hospitalization and mortality and that gives the government options.”
He told Highland Radio: “I think it would be wrong of us to be too specific as to what it could mean. But clearly the great threat of the virus is that it causes some people to become seriously ill, end up in the hospital, end up in critical care, or die in a hospital or nursing home.
“So if you can protect the most vulnerable, then for most of the rest of the population, the situation should be very manageable.”
Mr. Varadkar said that “if we vaccinate everyone over 60 and … everyone under 60 with a chronic disease, that’s actually 98 percent of the job in terms of deaths and hospitalizations.
“So we can see that vaccines really make a real difference in terms of hospitalizations and sick people and deaths compared to the cases in May or June and that could put us in a position where we can make decisions that we cannot make now. . “
On Tuesday night, Martin said “the end is really in sight”, holding out hope for a cautious reopening in April and widespread vaccination for the summer, but cautioned that easing of restrictions depended on continued removal. of the virus.
Schools will begin to reopen next Monday, but not all students will return to classrooms until mid-April and only if the number of cases continues to decline, hospital and ICU admissions decrease and the R number: the number of people who has the virus continues to infect – stays below one. The impact of next week’s return to schools for Leaving Cert students and younger elementary school children would be continually assessed, Taoiseach said.
Anxious
Varadkar said he understood that people were anxious, depressed, fatigued, and that it was difficult to stay positive. But the virus was on the decline, and the number of new cases dropped considerably because of what people were doing.
When asked about providing specific dates, the Tánaiste said the “strong advice” was that it was not a good idea to set exact metrics.
“The politician in me wants exact numbers. A guy like me would like to give them numbers, but it’s more about trends, “he said.
The four key metrics with which the lifting of restrictions would have to be measured were: if the level of hospitalizations and the numbers in ICU were half of what they are now, the R number was below one, the vaccination program It continued as scheduled and if there were new variants.
The key question would be the “trend”, if the trend went the wrong way, the government would act, he said.
When asked if the reopening of the schools depended on that trend, Mr. Varadkar said that if it was found that the back-to-school caused an increase in broadcasts, they would close.
This time a more cautious approach was being taken on back to school with the phased approach. “Schools are safe environments, but no environment is 100% safe,” he said.
The new variant of the B117 was one factor by which reopens had been staggered, he said. “In case it goes wrong, we can backtrack,” he said.
Mr. Varadkar said that the return of the construction sector had not been possible due to public health concerns; if there had been failure to communicate on this, he said that the government would have to take responsibility for that.
“Yesterday was an opportunity for a reboot. There is a very clear plan of what will and will not happen in the next 10 weeks. There is a clear message and a clear roadmap, ”he said.
The Tánaiste said it was confident that the vaccination program could be completed as scheduled, but acknowledged that there were some factors beyond the government’s control.
Mr Varadkar also said that Ireland would be happy to buy additional vaccines from the UK if they were available, but that by the time the UK had a surplus, Ireland would also have a surplus.
At present, the UK has no surplus, he told Newstalk Breakfast. “I think that by the time they have a surplus, we will have it too. We have 18 million doses ordered. We will have enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire population twice. “
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