The Tánaiste has ruled out an extension to the mid-term break or Christmas break to tackle the number of Covid cases in young children, but a further lockdown cannot be completely ruled out.
It comes as Deputy chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said children of primary school age were now the most likely to become infected, based on current trends.
As the Irish Examiner reports, figures have shown 4,393 children in this age group were infected in the two weeks to last Monday.
However, speaking in Longford on Thursday, Leo Varadkar said extending school holidays was not on the agenda for the Government now.
"The fact that there's a higher incidence among children aged between five and 12 is not a surprise. There is a lot of the virus about and this is a group that is not vaccinated. But at the same time, we're seeing a slight fall among people over 80 and that's a sign the boosters are working.
As things stand, we're not anticipating any school closures or extension of the half-term or Christmas breaks, we're not anywhere near that point yet."
Contact tracing
The Tánaiste said school was "a priority" for the Government because children had "missed enough school as is" and the only thing that would change that would be a "serious deterioration" in the viral situation.
He said schools would return as planned on Monday but that the National Public Health Emergency Team would examine whether contact tracing in schools needed to be resumed. He said this could mean antigen testing for children in pods.
Speaking later in Mullingar, Mr Varadkar accepted that all hospitals were under pressure at the moment but said health sector recruitment was like "running up a down escalator".
"Nobody can rule [another lockdown] out. As the CMO said the other day, it can't be taken off the table, but we do believe that we can avoid it.
"Because of the vaccination programme, 2,000 to 3,000 cases a day doesn't mean what it did last winter. The question is how does that translate to hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths.
While deaths are happening and every death is a tragedy – they are a fraction of what they would have been previously because of the vaccines."
Mr Varadkar said Government projections were that hospitalisations could go to 800 patients, while ICU could go to 150.
