On Friday night, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced a range of new restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus. From midnight until Easter Sunday, April 12th, everyone must stay at home except in the following circumstances:
- To travel to and from work for the purposes of work, only where the work is an essential health, social care, or other essential service that cannot be done from home (a list of these will be provided).
- To shop for food or household goods, or collect a meal.
- To attend medical appointments or collect medicines and other health products.
- For vital family reasons, such as providing care to children, elderly or vulnerable people.
- To take brief, individual physical exercise within 2km of your own home, which may include children from your own household, as long as you adhere to two-metre physical distancing.
- For farming purposes, that is food production and the care of animals.
Apart from the activities listed there should be no travel outside of 2km radius of your home for any reason.
In addition:
All public and private gatherings of any number of people outside a single household or living unit are prohibited.
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A further range of non-essential shops and services will be closed.
Adult community education centres and local community centres will be shut.
All non-essential surgery, health procedurals and other non-essential health services will be postponed.
All visits to hospitals, other residential healthcare settings and prisons are to cease, with specific exceptions on compassionate grounds.
Shielding or “cocooning” will be introduced for all those over 70 years of age and specified categories of people who are extremely vulnerable to Covid-19.
Travel to our offshore islands will be limited to residents of those islands.
Pharmacists will be permitted to dispense medicines outside of the current period of validity of the existing prescription in line with the pharmacist’s clinical judgment.
All public transport and passenger travel will be restricted only to essential workers and to people providing essential services.