On the way out in Ireland also
Looks like the digital Covid cert to enter a pub or restaurant and the wearing of masks in crowded public places are gone at the end of March in Ireland.
Plus a well deserved bonus for those healthcare workers that had to work through the pandemic
I'm happy to be Irish today.
Varadkar wants to set March 31st as ‘deadline to end almost all legal restrictions’
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said he wants to set March 31st as a “deadline to end almost all legal restrictions”, and has a “strong degree of confidence” that measures can be eased quickly in the coming weeks.
Speaking to his parliamentary party colleagues in Fine Gael this evening, Mr Varadkar said that vaccination and lessened severity associated with the currently-dominant Omicron variant means that hospitalisations, intensive care numbers and deaths have not increased to the same extent as in previous waves.
He said that Ireland has performed well by European and world standards on almost every measure, when it comes to controlling the pandemic.
Minister of State Ossian Smyth has said his hope is that the obligation to produce a Covid-19 cert domestically will expire at the end of March. While he says they will be needed for international travel, “domestically there’s no long term plan to keep them forever. They’re part of the restrictions that are due to expire on 31 March,” he said.
“I don’t want them to go beyond that.”
Expressing the view that there were non-financial costs to public health restrictions, borne of keeping people apart and regulating social contact, Mr Smyth said: “Putting in restrictions and keeping restrictions is not just something we can keep doing, it’s building up and I think there’s a limit to how much people can take.
“We’ll listen to the advice from public health experts on [using vaccine certs] and see what they say but we’re at a point where nearly everybody is vaccinated, [and] the second highest rate of Covid boosters in Europe,” he said.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hea...o-end-almost-all-legal-restrictions-1.4779469