Fully vaccinated healthcare workers who are Covid-19 close contacts will not need to restrict movements

Fully vaccinated healthcare workers who are close contacts of a Covid-19 case will not need to restrict their movements, however, other fully vaccinated people will still have to do so.

Nphet today asked the HSE and the HPSC to look at the guidance for the general public who have also been fully vaccinated.

This is expected to come in about two weeks.

Speaking tonight, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn said the advice applies only to healthcare workers at the moment as they were vaccinated first.

 

“Healthcare workers have been the group that were vaccinated first and as the general population gets fully protected in the coming weeks increasingly we’ll need guidance around that but at the moment, it’s a very small proportion,” he said.

The HPSC will examine its contact tracing guidance and issue its advice in a fortnight.

“We have also asked the HPSC to look at its contact tracing guidance to look at the guidance around this for the general public and we’d expect to have an update on that on this day fortnight,” he said.

This is the latest measure from Nphet as part of the ‘vaccine bonus’ which will show “tangible beneficial benefits of the vaccine”.

Dr Glynn said while some recommendations were made to Government last week and further vaccine bonuses will be advised in the future, “bits of guidance” will emerge in the weeks in between.

“There will be various bits of guidance along the way that do reflect the impact vaccination can have.

“We will have guidance in place by the time any significant proportion of the population is protected,” he added.

While the close contact advice only applies to healthcare workers at the moment, Dr Glynn urged caution before it can be expanded to all fully vaccinated people, saying “we all want to get there” but should not “get ahead of the science”.

He also said that healthcare workers should not only be fully vaccinated but fully protected, meaning that two weeks should have passed since their last dose.

Meanwhile director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, Dr Cillian de Gascun, said there are now 10pc to 15pc of cases which are community transmission of the South African and Brazillian variants.

There are now 43 cases of the South African variant and 19 cases of the Brazilian variant.

While the majority are close contacts of known cases, there have been cases of community transmission without an “obvious, apparent link to travel”.

 

 

Online Editors