Isolation requirements for close contacts need to be eased and it makes sense for people who were boosted, had no symptoms and had a negative antigen test to be allowed to return to work, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.

Currently, close contacts of a positive case who have not yet received a booster are required to restrict their movements for 10 days, while those who are boosted must restrict their movements for five days.

Due to the exceptionally high rate of Covid-19 cases, these rules have caused significant disruption across many sectors of society as staff shortages have impacted on businesses and services.

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Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan and senior members of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) are expected to submit fresh advice to Government on close contacts today.

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This advice will then be considered by Cabinet on Wednesday.

Mr Varadkar said it “made sense” for people who were boosted, had no symptoms and had a negative antigen test to return to work.

“Essentially with any public health advice, you do have to balance if it would cause more harm than good,” he told RTÉ’s News at One.

“I do think we need to relax the rules over close contacts, but we need to come up with a way of doing that, that is safe.”

New proposals

New advice from the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) for countries which are experiencing extreme stress on their healthcare systems was issued over the weekend. It proposed options for EU member states to shorten quarantine periods. These include removing the need for vaccinated close contacts of people infected with Covid-19 to quarantine if the health system is under extreme pressure.

Other proposals involve shorter quarantine periods for close contacts of Covid-19 in case of high and extreme pressure on healthcare systems and society, as well as testing with rapid antigen tests to release patients from quarantine.

Mr Varadkar said there were “cautious grounds for optimism” that the impact of the Omicron variant may be “less severe”.

Mr Varadkar said the high level of immunity in the country as a result of high vaccination levels was probably one reason for this.

Record-breaking daily case counts have been recorded multiple times over the past few weeks as a result of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant.

The number of Covid patients in hospital topped 1,000 this week – the first time since February 2021 – but the number in ICU has remained relatively stable.

Despite this, Mr Varadkar said the wave of cases from the Omicron variant has probably not peaked yet.

On the easing of restrictions, the Tánaiste said this would happen in stages rather than “one fell swoop”.

If the Omicron wave peaked in the coming weeks then the Government would be open to the possibility of easing restrictions in February, he said.

"We're probably the only country in Europe where for two years we haven't been able to stand in a bar or go to your office if you want to," he said.

Mr Varadkar added he did not want Ireland to be an outlier in terms of restrictions for "the third summer" in a row.

Long-term plan

Separately, immunology prof Paul Moynagh has said there needs to be a long-term plan for coping with Covid-19.

The high level of virus within the community, combined with the success of the vaccination and booster programmes, have resulted in a “wall of immunity”.

However, speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, he warned this immunity could wane in time which was why a long-term plan was required.

While officially half a million cases had been identified in the past eight weeks, and one million cases was reached this week, in reality the true figure was more likely to be 1.5 million, added Prof Moynagh.

The virus was now going to find it difficult to find new people to infect, he said.