The Prime Minister of Ireland on Thursday regretted the decision to relax the blocking rules in the country at Christmas time.
In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson, Micheal Martin said, “If we had known then what we know now, we certainly wouldn’t have made that decision now.”
Ireland is blocked again after easing restrictions in December, which resulted in the country with one of the highest infection rates in the world in January.
Martin added that Ireland would remain in confinement “for a while” to reduce the number of hospitals.
The UK variant is now responsible for 70% of Covid-19 cases in Ireland, said Martin.
“I think that, globally, we have to step up vaccination efforts, because it is important that everyone is vaccinated, not just the countries that are richer and in a position to do so earlier,” he said.
In addition, he also said that “the new variants may hamper the vaccine effort” and reiterated that the Irish target continues to vaccinate 80% of people until September.
“It was interrupted a little bit by problems with the AstraZeneca vaccine and its supply, and we are not getting the same level of supply that we thought we would get earlier this year and that is part of the wider EU procurement problem with AstraZeneca,” he acknowledged. Martin, but said the country was receiving higher volumes of other vaccines in the second quarter of the year.