Slight increase in people staying within 10km as cases on the rise

Picture Denis Minihane.

More people are staying within 10k of their homes but there is still a large group that are travelling beyond the 5km limit.

According to the latest statistics, around 35% of the population travelled beyond 10km across a seven-day period.

Under current travel restrictions, people are required to stay within 5km of their home and are only to travel for essential purposes.

Data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show indications that there has been some tightening of mobility behaviour but for the past number of weeks 35-37% of people continue to move beyond their local area.

It is encouraging that the majority of people have consistently adhered to the current restrictions with all counties showing a modest increase in the number of people staying close to home.

The seventh Staying Local Indicator (SLI) uses anonymised mobile phone activity records to measure the public’s movements across seven days.

Picture: Central Statistics Office

It found that Louth, Donegal and Sligo have shown the greatest improvement in the seven-day period to March 5.

Counties Carlow and Roscommon have the lowest percentage of the population staying local at 48% Dublin continues to have the highest number of people staying within 10km of home. This reflects its urbanised nature and access to services.

The SLI shows that areas with low levels of urbanisation are among the counties with lower percentages of people staying within their local area.

Munster has shown the greatest improvement with five of the six counties recording an increase of 2%.

The number of people across the country who remained within 10km of home rose sharply following the lifting of restrictions over the Christmas period and has remained within 63% and 68% in the first two-and-a-half months of the year.

As leading HSE clinicians warn of a possible surge in Covid-19 infections after 1,294 cases were confirmed over the weekend, it is vital that the public adhere to all the public health guidelines including travel restrictions.