The Chief Medical Officer says now is not an ideal time to be planning Christmas parties and social events.
It comes amid warnings as many as 400,000 people could be infected with Covid by Christmas if action isn’t taken.
Dr Tony Holohan says the country’s hospital system would struggle to cope with the additional pressure:
A further 3,633 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the Republic, the Department of Health said.
As of Wednesday morning, there were 634 patients in hospitals with the disease, including 119 in intensive care.
Another 43 deaths due to Covid-19 have been newly notified in the past week, bringing the total number of deaths in the State to 5,609.
The update comes as the chief medical officer said cancelling plans to socialise in the run-up to Christmas would be a “responsible decision”.
Dr Tony Holohan said there could be 200,000 Covid-19 infections in December, but this could be prevented.
He said workplaces would have to decide if office Christmas parties should go ahead.
“People are making these kinds of decisions as ways of reducing their own risk and ways of reducing the risk to their loved ones and their friends and family and so on,” he said, when asked if people should cut down on socialising.
“These are responsible decisions. Decisions that nobody wants to be taking it this time of the year, of course. We all understand the value of Christmas, particularly in this country. To me, those are responsible decisions now that people are making.”
Dr Holohan said the same reasoning should apply to office Christmas parties.
He told RTÉ News at One: “An organisation, looking at itself and looking at the kinds of measures that it now needs to take, when we’re advising people to stay at home as much as possible and work from home, those would be responsible decisions, if they were to be taken.”
What we’re trying to prevent is potentially 200,000 – maybe double that – people over the course of the month of December picking up this infection
The chief medical officer said he understood this was difficult for people to hear, but warned that National Public Health Emergency Team modelling projects there could be more than 200,000 cases of Covid-19 next month.
“What we’re trying to prevent is potentially 200,000 – maybe double that – people over the course of the month of December picking up this infection,” he said.
“I stress, none of those people are infected yet. If we have 200,000 people infected in December, 4,000 of them will end up in hospital at Christmas.
“We will see 200,000 people being asked to self-isolate over the Christmas period, where they can’t meet up with or shouldn’t meet up with friends, family or anybody else that are important to them.
“These are huge impacts that will be placed on the population at this time of the year, if we don’t find it within ourselves to improve our collective adherence.
“And so, taking those measures around workplaces, to my mind would be very simple measures to cut down discretionary social contact.”
