IRELAND’S Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan has said that the public will need to become used to ‘a new normal’ as the world comes to terms with Covid-19.
On a day when a further 59 Covid-19 related deaths were confirmed – bringing Ireland’s death toll to 1,159.
Dr Holohan warned that the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) was not in a position to recommend an easing of the restrictions. Those measures are due to lapse next Tuesday, May 5, but the NPHET are expected to recommend an extension on Friday to the Cabinet.
“If those assessments were made on any of the days, including today, we wouldn’t be in a position to recommend a progression to any of these an easing of restrictions,” he said.
“We’re just not quite as far as we’d like to be. We’re not down to a low enough level, yet,” he said.
“We hope to see further continued progress but we still have a way to go on a number of those important indicators.”
Dr Holohan pleaded with people to ‘stay the course’ and acknowledged that patience was ‘warning thin’. However, he stressed that continuing to abide by the measures introduced last month was vital.
The CMO said that it would now become ‘socially unacceptable’ for people to go out in public when they displayed flu-like symptoms.
He said: “The message will be, almost like smoking in company, this is something we don’t do anymore. We have to get used to a new normal.”
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