The Health Service Executive’s Emergency Department Taskforce is calling for the reintroduction of public health measures.
It follows hospitals in the Mid-west region having to cancel elective health care due to the prevalence of Covid and staff being unavailable to work due to Covid infection.
The measures will include requiring a greater use of masks to limit the transmission of Covid.
The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly says the government has no intention of introducing restrictions.
Minister Donnelly says that the BA.2 variant of Covid 19 now accounted for about 95% of cases in Ireland, and is far more transmissible.
While the CEO of Nursing Homes Ireland says that up to 65% of nursing homes are experiencing outbreaks of Covid-19 but the majority of residents are not very ill and the profile of illness is much, much lower.
