“There have been no conversations like that.”
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said there are no plans currently to extend the restrictions imposed on Kildare, Laois and Offaly to other counties.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Monday, Donnelly said the government would be following the advice of public health doctors but there were no plans at the moment to extend the restrictions to other counties or extend the current restrictions on the three counties.
“Nothing like that is being proposed at the moment,” Donnelly said.
“I have had no conversation with any of the public health doctors about restrictions in other counties.
“There have been no conversations like that,” he added.
He said the plan is for the restrictions on the three affected counties to be lifted at midnight on Sunday, but the public health doctors would be monitoring situation on a daily basis.
Donnelly also said that he expects the fatality rate to increase due to the rise in the number of daily cases.
“If you look at the daily number of cases, it is going up. The sad reality is, there can be a time lag between cases and hospitalisations,” he said.
Donnelly said the number of people in hospital and ICU linked to Covid-19 doubled but from a low base, however he admitted that if the number of cases goes up, “it stands to reason that sadly there will be a fatality rate following that.”
A press briefing at the Department of Health was due to take place on Monday evening but this has been postponed due to a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team.
ℹ️ There will be no Department of Health briefing this evening "due to meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team."
The next Department of Health press briefing will be this Thursday, 20th August.@JOEdotie
— Rob O'Hanrahan (@RobOHanrahan) August 17, 2020
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