Leo Varadkar has doubled-down on the Government’s pledge not to reintroduce Covid restrictions.
The Tanaiste said that they had no intention of “turning on and turning off restrictions” whenever new waves of the virus came along.
He was speaking after an increasing number of public health experts called for politicians to consider bringing back some safeguards against Covid, like facemasks.
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Ireland is in the middle of the second Omicron wave that is sweeping across Europe, with another 21,000 positive Covid cases recorded on Wednesday.
But Mr Varadkar has insisted that it does not mean we need to bring back restrictions.
He said: “As things stand we are experiencing a second wave of Omicron, the Omicron-plus variant, which as you know is more virulent than the original variant strain and is driven by the fact that these things do come in waves and there has been a reduction in restrictions in the last couple of weeks, people are mixing more.
“So, you know, it isn’t a surprise that we’re seeing an increase in infections.
“What is reassuring is that half of the people who are in hospital with Covid would be in hospital anyway, they’re incidental.
“We aren’t seeing the kind of numbers in ICU we would have been seeing a few months ago and thankfully the number of deaths is very low.
“So we have to keep monitoring the situation, we certainly don’t want to end up in the situation where we have to reimpose restrictions.
“This virus isn’t going to go away, we’re going to have more waves over the next couple of months, couple of years and we don’t want to be turning on and off restrictions.
“We do need to live with this virus.
“And the solution in my view is vaccination, it’s heeding the advice to stay at home if you have symptoms, getting a test if you do and then observing the common sense advice that we’ve asked people to do.”
Mr Varadkar was speaking at the sod-turning of a new RCSI academic centre at Connolly hospital in Blanchardstown, which is in the Tánaiste’s own constituency of Dublin West.
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