So the cases are spiralling once more and everyone is nervously eyeing the hospital admissions, which are rising slightly, with intensive care numbers happily stable for now.
Publicans and restaurateurs are expectantly ordering in more stock and lining up the staff for the big reopening next week. The special legislation is with President Michael D Higgins and expected to get his final assent.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin will call together his ministers on Wednesday in expectation of a decision on opening so-called indoor eating and drinking. By then the Government may have learned a whole new dimension around the word pressure.
We may well hear more arguments for a little more delay to allow the ‘vaccine wall’ to be built a little higher and stronger before generating more movement and interaction. But unless case numbers go utterly crazy, the pubs, restaurants and cafés will be reopened for fully vaccinated adults.
“At all the meetings which have been held, there has been no talk of anyone eyeing the emergency brake – up to this point at any rate,” one well-placed source said last night.
Like so much else in ‘small country to big country’ relations, the carry-on in England will certainly condition a mood in Ireland already sweltering happily with heat pressures.
But Irish officials argue that, while the impact of travel and therefore infection spreading from the adjacent island is real, other comparisons are limited. We are reminded that England has had pubs open since April. They also point out that Ireland is among the first countries to insist that full vaccination is a criterion for reopening.
“Other EU countries are following Ireland’s lead in that regard. There are risks associated with everything but the pub and restaurant indoor service resumption is based on expert medical advice,” our source further adds.
The English ‘Freedom Day’ reopening – which is far more radical than similar moves in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland – has been widely condemned. In a letter to medical journal The Lancet , more than 100 doctors and scientists condemned Boris Johnson’s plan as “a dangerous and unethical experiment” because of the longer-term risks. Mike Ryan of the World Health Organisation said the approach showed “moral emptiness and epidemiological stupidity”. The experts’ condemnation was compounded by a volte face which today sees the prime minister and his finance minister forced to self-isolate after the already-vaccinated health minister, Sajid Javid, himself got Covid-19.
This week’s Covid drama in Dublin is different from the normal drill of the Nphet medical experts meeting, reporting to the Covid-19 cabinet subcommittee, and on to the Cabinet. This time we expect Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to report to Cabinet on the new regulations following on the new law he last week piloted through the Dáil and Seanad.
We further expect the three Coalition party leaders to meet with chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan and get an update on all aspects of the situation. But right now it looks very much like ‘all systems go’ for indoor drinking and dining from next week onwards.