John Lahart
Question:185. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Health his views on matters raised in correspondence (details supplied) regarding the roll-out of vaccines. [13579/21]
View answerThursday, 11 March 2021
Questions (185)
Written answers
As you will be aware, the public health restrictions at level 5 of the Government's Framework Resilience and Recovery 2020-2021: Plan for Living with COVID-19 will remain in place until 5th April 2021, when a further review will be conducted. The Framework continues to provide an appropriate mechanism to guide decision-making, and it will continue to be supplemented by more detailed sectoral guidance in relation to measures that apply at each level of the Framework.
On 23rd February, 2021, the Government published it's updated plan for managing Covid-19 - COVID-19 Resilience & Recovery 2021: The Path Ahead. This three part plan reviews the learnings from our experience to date, considers the enormous impacts our efforts to manage and suppress the disease have had on our economy and on our society and sets out a cautious and measured approach to the easing of restrictions over the coming months.
Since the emergence of COVID-19, the Government has been guided at all times by the emerging scientific understanding of the virus and in particular has been in receipt of advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET). The advice of NPHET is usually provided in the form of a letter to the Minister for Health from the Chief Medical Officer, in his role as the Chair of NPHET. This advice is subsequently published on the Government website. It has set out a consistent set of advices and recommendations that are available for inspection by all.
The clear advice from NPHET has been and continues to be that our overarching objective must be to suppress the virus to the lowest level possible and to maintain it at a low level. This is essential for protecting public health and our core priorities of education, health and social care services and shielding the most vulnerable from the disease.
The Path Ahead is available online: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/c4876-covid-19-resilience-and-recovery-2021-the-path-ahead/.