Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I am sorry; Sligo has had restrictions, as have Limerick and Galway. The most recent spike in respect of Covid-19, which was in June, was associated with the FLiRT variant. It did not necessarily cause an increase in severity of illness or admission to ICU, but it was still quite infectious and the numbers did go up. It is levelling off, but I think into July we will still see the numbers of cases for that. When we add that to any other type of infection control outbreak in a hospital, like I said, a vomiting bug such as norovirus, we will get elements of restriction.

The visiting restrictions being applied anywhere are being applied under antimicrobial resistance and infection control, AMRIC, guidelines, which means we do not go for full blanket of there being absolutely no visiting. We do sensitive management for any type of restriction for the least possible time. That is simply to reduce the spread of the infection. Infection comes from visitors, staff and patients and infection controls measures are very important. We seem to be over the highest peak of that, I hope, but we will continue to see waves in the future. There is nothing particular to Tallaght hospital, to be fair to it. The hospital actually managed it very well. It is very hard to manage restriction in a hospital environment, but I think it actually did it exceptionally well.

Mr. O'Connell might comment on the primary care centre.