Encouraging people to continue adhering to public health guidelines, Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan reiterated the importance of the next few weeks.
Speaking to Virgin Media News, he said:
“Now 14 days out from Christmas Day is the day to begin to look forward to the measures you can take to protect yourself, avoid picking up this infection. You will be getting together probably with people in our family over Christmas.
“In many situations, they may be people who are older, in many situations they may be people with an underlying medical condition and if you take actions now to protect yourself from picking up this infection you’ll help to protect them when you do meet up over Christmas from picking up this infection.
“We do know over the Christmas period, we have a lot of meeting of people who are younger meeting with people who are older in their same family in a concentrated period of time if you like. So, that’s one of the key things we’re worried about – what we call intergenerational transmission.”
Advising everyone to think ahead, the public is being urged to remember that the self-isolation period will now include Christmas Day.
Also worth remembering that from today, if you come into close contact with someone who ends up being COVID positive, your self-isolation includes Christmas Day https://t.co/U5RC8yAKbr
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 11, 2020
