The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) met this morning to discuss whether pubs should be allowed to reopen on Monday, despite plans for them to remain closed until at least September.
Pubs that do not serve food have been closed since mid-March with a number of planned reopening dates postponed due to concerns regarding the rising rate of Covid-19 infections in the country.
However, it has been decided that they will remain closed. Speaking at this evening's Government Covid-19 briefing, Dr Glynn said NPHET had discussed the matter but the group concluded that it was still unsafe to reopen pubs due to rising infection numbers in the last two weeks.
Kildare lockdown
On Kildare, Dr Glynn said the situation was improving but that it was still too early to lift the current restrictions in the county.
“It has not improved or stabilised to the extent that we would need,” he said.
“It still has the highest 14 and seven-day incidence in the country. It is too early to relax the measures.”
The Covid-19 spread has changed from a series of large clusters to around 250 outbreaks in private households due to the normal interaction between families, officials tracking the disease said.
The reproductive rate of the virus in Ireland is at between 1 and 1.2, the statistician advising the Government Professor Philip Nolan said.
Prof Nolan said: “The R-number is now between 1 and 1.2. While this is an improvement on what we have seen recently, it is still not where we want to be. We are still seeing growing transmission of the disease and we need to bring the R-number back below 1 if we are to effectively slow the spread of Covid-19 and suppress its transmission.”
Irish pubs have endured the longest lockdown in the EU according to the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI), which has called for a “dedicated and immediate” hospitality support package.
The organisation has compared the lockdown of pubs across EU member states to find that only Romania’s indoor bars also remain shut – though owners have been allowed to serve customers outdoors since June.
The group, representing over 14,000 drinks and hospitality businesses, said that pubs serving food - which were allowed to reopen in the Republic at the end of June - comprise just 40 per cent of pubs across the country and that 60 per cent of Irish pubs have now been closed for more than five months.
