The relaxation of isolation rules for Covid-19 cases and close contacts was "proportionate" given the impact of the Omicron variant, chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan has said.

Speaking at a media briefing after the Government announced the changes, Dr Holohan said that the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) was taking “substantial assurance” in the protection afforded by high vaccination rates against Omicron to be able to recommend the new rules, despite the high level of daily infections and increase in hospitalisations.

Daily cases of more than 20,000 would have been “mindblowing” a year ago, he said, but there have been “fewer serious complications” from Omicron due to the protection against severe illness due to high rates of vaccinations and boosters.

Hospital Report

He stressed the changes, coming into effect on Friday, were not about “abandoning” Covid-19 measures but replacing them with new guidance on wearing higher-grade masks and taking regular antigen tests.

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Rejecting the possibility of antigen tests and higher-grade masks being sent to every household, he said that this would be a “very significant” cost and “out of proportion”.

‘Incentive’

Deputy chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn said free antigen tests would be "an incentive" for people to register positive antigen test results with the HSE.

Dr Holohan said Nphet would need another week to be certain about the potential impact on the country's health system and know that "some things we might have feared" will not happen.

“We think enough time has not elapsed for us to conclude that that can’t and won’t happen, but we haven’t seen a very, very significant deterioration,” he said.

Nphet will consider whether to recommend lifting restrictions on hospitality and other sectors at its meeting on January 20th when it will have a detailed epidemiological assessment, he said.

The fast-spreading Omicron variant now represents almost 98 per cent of Covid-19 cases.

The State’s public health advisers are continuing to ask people to work from home where they can and to limit social contacts to suppress transmission.

Prof Philip Nolan, chair of Nphet's modelling group, said that since Christmas, Covid-19 infections had quadrupled and that daily hospital admissions had tripled.

“The very high level of infection and significant burden of disease in terms of requiring at least a short stay in hospital is not as yet translating into a significant demand for critical care,” he said.

Slight increase

Nphet needed “to keep an eye” on a slight increase in admissions to intensive care units, which have risen from five or six cases a day to eight, he said.

Prof Nolan said that it was “of some concern” that Omicron had not peaked yet among older ages, with infections among 19- to 35-year-olds at “three to four times” the level among the over-65s. He cautioned that there may be “more severe outcomes” as the median age rises.

On a more optimistic note, he said there were signs that the Omicron wave may be stabilising, but could only say it had peaked when cases were “consistently declining”.

“It is not going to be a sharp descent that you see in models but much more a kind of grumbling level of infection that we have to manage,” he said.

Dr Holohan said the country needed to be "cautious" about proceeding with fourth doses, following Israel's example, and that he had written to the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) to consider this and what was required in the next phase of vaccinations.

“We need to tease that one through carefully but quickly,” he said.

He has also asked Niac to assess whether there is a level of “population immunity” from Covid-19 due to the high levels of infection from Omicron in the past month.