Are we reaching the end of people's lockdown tolerance? Ciara Kelly shares her thoughts.

Ciara Kelly shares her thoughts on whether people's tolerance for the COVID-19 restrictions is diminishing. Elsewhere, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer says setting dates for lifting COVID-19 restrictions would be “disingenuous” at this point in time. NPHET today reported 613 new cases of the virus, as well as 35 deaths. The reproduction number is between 0.6 and 0.9, and the UK variant still accounts for 90% of cases. There have been calls for health officials to set target dates for reopening society. The plan published earlier this week gives no specific dates for reopening different sectors, other than the timelines set out for reopening schools, childcare and non-COVID health services during March and April. Dr Ronan Glynn this evening said there is simply too much uncertainty due to the emergence of the UK variant. He said: "Setting dates I think at this point would be disingenuous. "We have a variant... basically we have a new virus, relative to what we were dealing with in 2020. It's more transmissible. "We still have high levels of disease in the community, so we need to see how things go over the coming weeks: we need to continue suppressing the disease through March."