The Tánaiste has warned the possibility of a fourth wave of coronavirus could affect the further reopening of society and the economy.
Leo Varadkar said “increased socialisation across the summer, and this Indian variant or even the Vietnamese variant which we’re reading about now” could cause a fourth wave.
Vaccination will make the difference between this and the third wave, he said, “but the problem is only 20 per cent of our population is fully vaccinated.
“So what we’re targeting now is to get over 60 per cent – 2.5 million people fully vaccinated by the end of July, that’s where we need to be.”
Mr Varadkar said the Government will assess the epidemiological situation at the end of June “before giving the final green light”. He said “that’s always been the case that we review the situation before D-day”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme, the Tánaiste said the decisions on reopening in June, July and August “were made on foot of public health advice from Nphet [National Public Health Emergency Team] and the CMO [chief medical officer]” on the basis of a “low to moderate risk”.
The review at the end of June will be based on the levels of infection, the vaccination programme, the impact of the variants and the number of people in hospital.
Dublin crowds
Speaking about the concerns chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan raised about large crowds in Dublin city centre on Saturday evening, Mr Varadkar said “people are allowed to meet up outdoors and if anything we’re encouraging people to meet up outdoors rather than indoors, but it’s still supposed to be three households.”
“Those scenes were not the kind of things that we want to see but I would caveat that by saying that, you know, I do understand that people have had a really tough couple of months, haven’t been able to see family and friends, the weather is good” and people are going to get outdoors.
He added that “people don’t get as annoyed about indoors because we don’t see it”.
