He said this would help encourage the hospitality sector to comply with current guidelines.
Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Tony Holohan has said people "should leave" if not asked for their Covid certs when entering bars and restaurants.
Under current Covid-19 guidelines, an EU Digital Covid Certificate is required to gain access to indoor hospitality and events.
The CMO made the comments in a Covid-19 update posted to his Twitter account, where he said Ireland was seeing "very high levels" of Covid-19 transmission.
He said that the likelihood of a person ending up with a severe Covid infection is "significantly reduced" if they are vaccinated and called on those unvaccinated or needing a booster shot to come forward for inoculation.
However, he added that the risk of becoming severely ill is "not eliminated" with vaccination and that it is important for people to continue to adhere to basic Covid-19 prevention measures like handwashing, mask-wearing and social distancing.
The CMO also called on the public to "recognise risk environments" and to be "aware of the kinds of activities that we're involved in that do constitute a higher risk of transmission".
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On top of this, he urged people to reduce their number of social contacts as much as they "reasonably can" and to stay away from as many high-risk activities as possible over a period time.
"It is okay, for example, to go to a pub or a nightclub but we need to be mindful that the more we do of that, the greater the risk we have," he explained.
"We all individually need to try to cut down our level of risk and reduce our levels of social contacts over the course of the next number of weeks."
The CMO also said NPHET was focused on how each sector can offer protection for both its staff and customers.
"We're talking about the hospitality sector or schools or universities or retail environments, public transport - each one of these environments has arrangements in place to apply public health guidance to offer protection to individuals using those services," he stated.
"And we need to encourage, if you like, continued high compliance with those sectors.
"We know, for example, that perhaps in every setting that people are going out to, they're not being asked, for example, for the Covid pass.
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"What we need you as an individual to understand [is] that an environment where you're not being asked about these things or where handwashing facilities are not present or it's evident that mask-wearing is not as it should be - you should look at that as a riskier environment than it should be.
"And you should leave, feel empowered to leave, and certainly not go back to visit.
"All of that will help to encourage compliance and adherence in the sectors."
The CMO said NPHET hoped the combination of all these measures would help to reduce Covid-19 transmission and bring Ireland "back into an improved situation".
Main image via Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie
