NPHET strongly advising people to return to work from home

The recommendation follows a review of growing case numbers.

NPHET have made a recommendation to the government that people work from home wherever possible. The recommendation comes following a meeting on Thursday (11 November) following a sharp increase in Covid cases in recent weeks. The government is set to discuss the recommendation next Tuesday. Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly recently said that the government had no active plan to implement working from home full-time again. He made the comments during an interview on Newstalk Breakfast on Wednesday. "I haven't received any advice to that end. It's not something that Government is actively considering at the moment," he said. “I think at the press conference last night, the NPHET team were being asked about a lot of different hypotheticals and they were giving a view generally that given the case numbers right now they would prefer people to be opting for the safer option.” Social settings are being cited as a key factor in the rise of Covid cases in Ireland. Donnelly has asked people to begin restricting their movements, including putting a cap on how often they should go to a nightclub, and to not go to a work Christmas party if they're "doing a lot of other times". "The advice is not: 'Don't have any social contact'. The advice right now is we have so much social contact that this disease is just rising far too quickly", he elaborated. Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan touched briefly on the possibility of restrictions being reintroduced at a press conference on Wednesday. "Restrictions, if we think they're needed, will always be something that we'll give contemplation to and if we think they have a role to play in whatever form", he said. "The word 'restrictions' is a broad word. If, by that, you mean the closure of economic and social activities, the closure of certain sectors or segments of society, nobody is ruling out things like that anywhere", he added. There were 3,680 cases of Covid confirmed in Ireland on Thursday.