Tánaiste Leo Varadkar is isolating due to a positive antigen test, his spokesman has confirmed.

He is one of a number of Cabinet members to have received a positive result in recent times amid a Covid surge. Taosieach Micheál Martin had to cancel a meeting with the US president last week after he tested positive in Washington. He has since flown to Brussels following isolation.

The news comes as concern has been expressed about any moves to reduce the length of time people are required to isolate if they test positive for Covid-19 due to pressures on workforces.

Hospital Report

Reducing the seven-day isolation period could lead to more people being infected, professor of experimental immunology Kingston Mills warned on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.

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The Irish Independent reports today that the Government is considering reducing the isolation period due to the impact of staff Covid-related absences on public and private workforces.

People could be infectious for up to 10 days, but they might experience symptoms for only three days after which they could be tempted to return to work where they could still transmit the virus, Prof Mills said.

It was very difficult to stop transmission of the new BA.2 subvariant if people were not wearing masks, he added. He said other public health measures would not make a difference because the variant is so transmissible, for example, staying two metres apart would not help if someone with the virus sneezes in a room and they were not wearing a mask.

Prof Mills pointed out that the symptoms of BA.2 are more upper respiratory and not as severe as earlier variants, but it remained unknown what the long-term consequences could be.

While young people did not appear to be getting very sick, some people were ending up in hospital and in intensive care, he said. “It is not trivial.”

The Health Service Executive’s (HSE) chief clinical officer on Thursday said there would be “clear implications” for the State’s hospital waiting list plan arising from the surge of Covid infection.

Dr Colm Henry told The Irish Times that targets set under the waiting list initiative were likely to be endangered by the surge, which is forcing the cancellation of elective care across the hospital system.

His comments came as a further 23,125 Covid-19 cases were reported by the Department of Health on Thursday, including 14,215 who registered a positive antigen test with the HSE.

There were 1,466 patients with Covid-19 in hospital on Friday morning, including 55 in intensive care.

The number of patients in hospital with Covid is combining with high levels of absenteeism due to infection, with more than 5,000 healthcare staff now off, and significant numbers of people turning up requiring treatment in emergency rooms.

“We have a waiting list initiative, we have targets alongside that – certainly the current pressures on unscheduled care between presentations [in hospitals] and Covid will have clear implications for our plan for waiting lists,” Dr Henry said.

Restrictions

Mr Martin, meanwhile, said he has discussed the rise in cases with chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan but said there is no change in the Government’s advice on Covid-19. The current wave does not require further restrictions, he said, but he advised that people wear masks in “crowded situations”.

Mr Martin said Dr Holohan was “very clear that the advice stays. He hasn’t withdrawn advice in terms of the desirability of wearing masks in crowded situations.”

HSE chief executive Paul Reid separately told hospitals to prioritise urgent Covid care for a period of two weeks.

In a letter sent to chief executives of hospital groups, Mr Reid said there was now a need for a 14-day period of “prioritisation of unscheduled Covid-19 care and urgent, time-sensitive work”.

It is the third time in the past six months that the health service has issued a system-wide diktat to downgrade the priority given to non-Covid care – on each previous occasion, this occurred during a Covid wave that saw the introduction of wider societal restrictions.

“The increase in Covid-19 cases over the past two weeks has yet again placed our healthcare systems under great pressure, both from the continued impact of cases being hospitalised and from the growing staff shortages related to Covid-19 infections,” he wrote.

He pointed to an increase of 7 per cent in Covid cases in the past seven days, with the number of patients with Covid in hospital up 29 per cent in the week to March 23rd, while numbers in ICU have grown by 25 per cent.

There have been 27,568 attendances nationally in emergency departments.