Health officials urge public not to get takeaway pints on St Patrick’s Day

People have also been asked not to attend demonstrations.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn has urged people not to order takeaway pints on St Patrick's Day. He made the comments at Monday's Department of Health briefing, where health officials said they were concerned about how the rate at which Covid-19 is decreasing in the community has slowed. Asked about takeaway pints, the Deputy CMO replied: "It's very difficult sitting in this seat because you're never asking people to do anything good. "The reality is again, we simply have too much disease in the country. "We do not want people to be congregating over pints. We don't want people to be meeting up indoors. "We don't want people to be buying cans and meeting up and drinking them on St Patrick's Day. "None of those messages again are what people want to hear but unfortunately our message has to be consistent." He added: "The reason why we're giving this message is not because we want to be killjoys, we're giving the message because we know what will happen if people do meet up. "Some of those people will end up in hospital and some of those people will die." The Deputy CMO also asked the public not to attend any demonstrations on St Patrick's Day. On this topic, he said: "Regardless of the nature of the demonstration, the advice at the moment is that people should not congregate." At the briefing on Monday evening, it was revealed there was no new deaths reported to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre. However, the HPSC was notified of an additional 575 cases of Covid-19 in Ireland.