Ireland to ease COVID-19 restrictions as cases decline...

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Empty city centre shopping street is seen, amid the outbreak of COVID-19, in Dublin, Ireland, March 1, 2021. (Photo: Agencies)

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin on Tuesday evening announced a phased plan to ease the current COVID-19 restrictions that have virtually placed Ireland under nationwide lockdown since last December.

According to the plan, people who have received their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine for more than two weeks can meet each other indoors without wearing masks or keeping social distance, provided that they do not come from more than two different households.

This measure has come into effect immediately after the plan was announced.

Starting from April 12, people will be allowed to move freely within their county or travel no more than 20 kilometers away from their home if crossing county boundaries, people will also be permitted to meet outdoors so long such a meeting does not involve members from more than two households, and all residential housing construction projects and construction projects related to early-learning and childcare will be reopened.

From this date on, all the primary and secondary schools will resume in-classroom teaching for all students. Prior to this, some of the primary and secondary school students in the country have already returned to classrooms in a phased manner.

From April 19, training and playing of some traditional Irish sports games such as Gaelic football will be permitted for adults aged above 20.

From April 26, outdoor sports facilities such as golf courses and tennis courts as well as outdoor visitor attractions such as zoos and heritage sites can reopen, but amusement parks must remain closed. From this day on, children will be also allowed to conduct outdoor training or dancing with each group comprising no more than 15 people and such activities shall not involve close body contacts, and the maximum number of people permitted to attend a funeral will also be increased to 25 from the present 10.

The government may consider further measures to ease the restrictions from May 4, said Martin at a press conference, adding that this will depend on how the pandemic situation in the country will be like by then.

The above plan was unveiled by Martin about a week before the current restrictions in Ireland are supposed to expire on April 5.

Under the current restrictions, which are rated by the Irish government as the level-5 or the highest-level restrictions against the COVID-19 pandemic, people are prohibited from traveling more than 5 km away from their home unless with some special reasons and all the non-essential retail outlets and most of the indoor public facilities are closed.

The Irish Department of Health on Tuesday said that another 368 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 14 additional COVID-19-related deaths were reported in the country. Both of these figures are much lower than the peak time when each day close to a thousand cases and dozens of deaths were reported in the country.

To date, a total of 235,444 people in Ireland have been infected with COVID-19 and 4,681 of them have died from the virus, said the department in a statement.

The department also said that as of March 27, over 800,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in Ireland.

Martin said at Tuesday's press conference that the government expects that close to 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine will be administered by the end of May, which will account for about 60 percent of the country's total population.

Source: Xinhua

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