Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a reasonable request and one I will bring back to the Department. That is not a problem at all.

For various reasons, there is no advice coming to me at the moment in terms of the reimposition of any measure. One reason is that the sublineage BA.2, which accounts for approximately 95% of cases, is so contagious that using population-based measures to push the curve down would need to be very serious. The advice remains that masks should be worn, people should stay at home if they are symptomatic and, critically, people should get vaccinated or boosted. Approximately 700,000 people are now, or shortly will be, eligible for their booster shots. To give a sense of just how important that is, of the 1,610 people in hospital with Covid, approximately half are there because of Covid and fewer than half of those are fully protected. Only 370 of the 1,610 are there because of Covid and are also boosted.

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