Tony Holohan: The important thing is not what government does but what “you as an individual” do

NPHET are due to meet again on Thursday to discuss the impact of recent restrictions.

Dr Tony Holohan has said that individual actions will be the major factor in slowing the spread of Covid, not the actions of the government. The National Public Health Emergency Team are set to meet on Thursday to discuss the new restrictions, but Dr Holohan does not expect there to be major changes since they were implemented. Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland on Monday, the Chief Medical Officer said: "Well, we'll meet again on Thursday as NPHET, we'll look at the situation, but it's unlikely that we would expect to see significant changes result of changes introduced last week, but we'll keep monitoring the course of the disease as we go through this week and in to next week." "And when and if we think we see signs of improvement, which is what we'd hope to see in the first instance, we'd expect to see those beginning to appear this week, if things are beginning to improve," he added. "We don't know that that would be the case but we'll be looking out for them. And if they do we'll call that, and we'll give government advice based on that." Dr Holohan went on to say that it has now become a case that actions taken by individuals will help stop the spread and urged people not to rely solely on what the government is doing. "With due respect to the government, it's not what government does at this point, but what you as an individual, your listeners, and particularly and most importantly, people who have symptoms. These are the most important people to get through to now," he said. Dr Holohan urged symptomatic people to self-isolate and arrange a PCR test, echoing his statement from previous weeks.