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No more than six people from two households in the affected areas will be able to gather in a private garden.
Restrictions on visiting other homes will be reintroduced in parts of Northern Ireland after a surge in coronavirus cases.
The new rules affect people from the city of Ballymena, those living in the Belfast council area, and addresses with postcodes BT43, BT28 and BT29.
Those zip codes span areas northeast of Ballymena and parts of Glenavy, Lisburn, and Crumlin.
People cannot visit other people’s homes, but there are some exceptions.
Exemptions include:
- Those in a social bubble with another home
- Those with caregiving responsibilities, including childcare
- Essential maintenance
- Supported living arrangements
- Visits required for legal or medical reasons
- Marriage or civil partnerships where a person has a terminal illness
No more than six people from two households in the affected areas will be allowed to gather in a private garden.
And the people who live in them are advised not to travel outside the zones unless necessary.
The measures, which mark the first series of localized restrictions to be imposed in Northern Ireland since the close of March, will take effect next week and will be in effect for at least fifteen days.
Northern Ireland currently has the UK’s highest rate of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people.
‘Progressive’
Prime Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill outlined the restrictions when they conducted their first joint press conference in Stormont for 73 days.
Ms Foster urged people living in affected areas to “act now and stop the spread of the virus.”
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Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill gave their first press conference together in more than two months
“There is a spread of the virus in Northern Ireland and we need people to work with us to stop that,” he stressed.
The executive said he was asking older and medically vulnerable people living in the areas affected by the new restrictions to be “particularly careful” and follow all public health advice.
Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill said hospitals and nursing homes in those areas would also be advised to limit visits, and allow a family member to visit once a week.
More frequent visits may be allowed only in “exceptional circumstances,” but that will be reviewed, he added.
“We may also have to add zip codes to this as the situation develops,” he said.
Ms Foster said the executive needed to limit social interactions between households to “push down the rising curve of infection” in areas with the highest rates of the virus.
The deputy prime minister urged people from outside the affected areas “not to think that they are invincible or immune.”
‘It is the dinner’
Ministers also agreed to provide around 600 pubs in Northern Ireland that do not serve food with a new indicative date to reopen.
The executive agreed that the drinks-only pubs may provisionally reopen on September 21, but this will need to be ratified closer to the date.
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Arlene Foster said that today the “villain” was in our homes, not in businesses where the number of customers was regulated.
Non-food pubs in the Republic of Ireland are also aiming to reopen on the same date, but this is under review.
Professor Ian Young, NI’s chief scientific advisor, told the news conference that he was satisfied that the mitigations adopted by the hospitality industry would ensure that it was safe to reopen.
Ms Foster said that currently, “the villain is not in business where the number of customers is regulated.”
“It’s in our houses, it’s the house party, it’s dinner, it’s the few people who come to have a drink or coffee,” he added.
Hospitality Ulster said the decision to give the pubs a new reopening date “would help secure hundreds of businesses and thousands of jobs that have been at stake.”
Taking strength
Unless the police show up on the doorstep of a residential area, we are seeing that they are actually cracking down on those big social gatherings that according to the data are happening in those BT areas and also in Belfast.
They say that they can manage to enforce what happens in bars and restaurants, that they are very happy with the behavior, but they really cannot handle what happens inside the houses and outside in the gardens.
It is similar to what happened in Glasgow a few weeks ago.
Obviously Belfast is hit the hardest by this and people are being asked to really cut back on departures; Restricting the number of people we can have in our backyards and mingling between houses is really forbidden, but there are exceptions.
When asked how the measures would be applied, Ms Foster said she “hoped people would comply.”
He said he did not want it to get to the stage where the measures had to be strictly enforced, but that the law would be in effect.
“We are always very aware that we ask people to do things that they would not normally do,” the prime minister added.
The executive also agreed to establish a group led by ministers to consider compliance and enforcement of regulations, to ensure that “everyone follows the spirit and letter of the law.”
The executive also agreed to give the green light to soft play areas in Northern Ireland that will reopen from Monday.
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The Health Department says the current R number, or reproduction rate, for the coronavirus in Northern Ireland is between 0.3 and 1.4.
The R value is the number of people to whom an infected person will transmit a virus, on average, and if the reproduction number is greater than one, then the number of cases increases very quickly.
Senior Scientific Advisor Professor Ian Young said that although the NI R-number estimate seemed lower than in recent weeks, there has been a “general increase in cases.”
New quarantine rules
It was also announced that starting at 04:00 BST on Saturday, anyone arriving at NI from Portugal, Hungary, French Polynesia, and Reunion will need to self-isolate for 14 days.
Non-quarantine travel is still allowed from the Portuguese islands, the Azores and Madeira.
Sweden will also be removed from the list of countries where quarantine measures are required.
The Health Department said it will continue to monitor the situation in all countries.
All of the announcements came as one more coronavirus-related death was recorded in the Newry, Morne and Down area, and 79 new cases were also reported across NI.
That brings the total to 568 deaths and 8,035 cases.
In the past seven days, there have been 177 new cases in the Belfast council area.
In the Republic of Ireland, no further deaths were reported Thursday, with the total standing at 1,781.
The Irish health department revealed there were 30,360 confirmed cases of the virus, after 196 more were recorded.
