New plans are being discussed.
Cabinet are meeting this morning to review a proposal that would allow only fully vaccinated people to enjoy indoor dining.
The proposal would mean that the government will need to work alongside the food service industry and implement a plan to ensure only those fully vaccinated against COVID can dine indoors.
This proposal is also looking at having these people needing to produce their vaccine cert in order to eat or drink inside.
There are also thoughts being discussed over developing a mobile phone app that will show proof of a vaccine or if the person has had COVID in the past nine months.
Indoor dining was set to reopen, along with drinking indoors, on July 5th but is now looking to be pushed back to July 19th in hopes of preventing the spread of the Delta variant.
Cabinet discussed the changes during a sub-committee meeting last night, which lasted until 1am.
Chief executive of the Restaurants Association of Ireland said that the delay in reopening is frustrating for the industry.
Adrain Cummings told RTE’s Morning Ireland: “This industry has been knocked back a number of times. We need answers.”
He also pointed out that hotels have been serving food indoors to customers staying over night since June 2nd, with no Delta outbreaks.
Nphet have said that the spread of the Delta variant could potentially see 700,000 over the next three months if nothing is done to prevent it, as it is even more transmissible than other stems.
The fear among government is that hospitals could be “overrun” if this variant begins to spread, with new vaccine measures also being introduced to slow the spread.
The AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines were also approved last night for use among all age groups, as they were previously only being administered to those over 50.
Along with this, the gap between the two AstraZeneca doses will be cut to four weeks. It is currently an eight week break which was reduced from 12 weeks.
