Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan has advised people against planning foreign holidays this summer.
He said the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) are advising against non-essential travel “for the foreseeable future”.
Dr Holohan said it is “not realistic” to expect the summer to be “characterised” by people flying to different countries on holiday.
“I don’t think we’re heading for a summer where millions of people from this part of the word can head to the beaches, other than the beaches in their own localities.”
In response to criticism of Nphet from Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary, Dr Holohan said he had "nothing but admiration" for Mr O'Leary.
However, he dismissed Mr O'Leary's claim that Nphet is pushing “misinformation”.
He said that public health officials must sometimes deliver bad news, however, “overall we stand over the process, the information and the advice we’ve given”.
10 further Covid-19 related deaths and 1,062 additional cases have been confirmed in the Republic of Ireland today.
All 10 deaths occurred in January. The median age of those who died is 79 years and the age range is 45-101 years.
There has been a total of 3,317 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland.
As of midnight Sunday, January 31st, the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) has been notified of 1,062 confirmed cases of Covid-19. There is now a total of 197,553 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ireland.
Of the cases notified today:
- 506 are men/546 are women.
- 57 per cent are under 45 years of age.
- The median age is 41 years old.
- 335 are in Dublin, 137 in Cork, 73 in Wexford, 58 in Galway, 54 in Kildare and the remaining 405 cases are spread across all other counties.
- As of 2pm today, 1,436 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 207 are in ICU. 38 additional Covid-19 cases have been reported in Irish hospitals in the past 24 hours.
