Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said that a slower reopening of society when the previous lockdown was lifted “probably would have been better.”
Lessons had been learned by Government and the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) and a slower reopening was likely to happen once the current Level 5 restrictions ended he told the Limerick Today show on Limerick Live 95.
Mr Varadkar said he thought people would understand that it made sense to reopen more slowly. While every effort was being made to get the vaccine out, it was possible that the country would never get to the point where everyone was immune.
Normal life
But if sufficient numbers of people were vaccinated then it would be possible to go back to normal life, he said.
When asked about reports that nurses at the Maternity Hospital in Limerick had vaccinations cancelled last week due to a delay while members of management had been vaccinated the previous week, Mr Varadkar said that should not have been the case, but pointed out that sometimes staff categorised as admin were in fact patient-facing and anyone dealing directly with patients should be vaccinated.
Until such time as all the over-70s and front line workers were vaccinated “we should be very careful about what we reopen,” he said.
Mr Varadkar said that the Government wanted schools to reopen and one of his regrets was that schools had been closed entirely during the first lockdown.
In other jurisdictions classes had remained open for special needs students and the vulnerable. This cohort was only four per cent of the school population and public health teams thought it was safe for them to reopen, he said.
“We want to get these classes and schools open and we will continue to work on that.”
