Donnelly rules out renewing 'draconian' Covid laws as 10,839 cases confirmed

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly says  the original Covid powers were draconian and were appropriate for the emergency we were in.

The Minister for Health says that he does not envisage the return of mandatory mask-wearing despite the high rate of Covid-19 in the community.

It comes as a further 10,839 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed on Friday.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has been notified of 5,750 PCR-confirmed cases of Covid-19 while 5,089 people registered a positive antigen test through the HSE portal.

As of 8am on Friday morning, 1,472 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised, with 59 of those currently being treated in ICU.

Stephen Donnelly told RTÉ Radio that the government was keen to move away from fining people or other legislative measures for breaking restrictions.

He defended the government’s decision, saying that the original Covid powers were draconian and were appropriate for an emergency phase, but that now we have to move towards living with Covid.

“I think the phrase is cautious optimism," he said "We had a very high caseload, the five-day rolling average is falling, the positivity rate is falling.

"The indications are hopefully now that we are past the peak, but what we've seen in some other countries when they have passed this peak is there's been quite a rapid decline in cases and really what we're looking to see is the decline in cases in hospitals because of the huge pressure."

Mr Donnelly said the most important thing we can do as a nation to take the pressure off the hospitals is for those who are yet to be boosted to get it.

"We estimate about 700,000 people who could be boosted who are now eligible for booster, just to give you a sense of how important it is, of the 1,600 in hospital, less than half of those have had the booster," he added.

"We see seen we've seen hospitalisation levels fall the last few days.

"Now, we have to be very careful, obviously. But what we've seen previously is when cases fall, hospitalisation admission rates tend to fall then a week later, and then the ICU admission rates a week after that, so hopefully what we're gonna see is an easing of the pressure on the hospitals."

Mr Donnelly said he would publish the most recent advice he has received on Covid19 in the coming days.

“In fact, I think the more the more the advice that is out there, the better."