The Prime Minister of Ireland on Thursday expressed his regret over the decision to relax the country’s lockdown rules around Christmas.
In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson, Micheal Martin said, “If we knew then what we knew now, we certainly wouldn’t have made that decision now.”
Ireland is stuck again after restrictions were relaxed in December, which resulted in the country having one of the highest infection rates in the world in January.
Martin added that Ireland would remain in a lockdown for “quite some time” to reduce the number of hospitals.
The UK variant is now responsible for 70% of Covid-19 cases in Ireland, Martin said.
“I think we need to step up vaccination efforts globally because it’s important that the whole world is vaccinated, not just countries that are wealthier and able to do it sooner,” he said.
In addition, he also said the “new variants could undermine the vaccination effort” and reiterated that Ireland’s goal remains to vaccinate 80% of people by September.
“It has been somewhat disrupted by problems with the AstraZeneca vaccine and its delivery, and we are not getting the same level of delivery that we expected at the beginning of the year, which is part of the wider EU purchase problem with AstraZeneca. , ”Admitted Martin, but said the country was getting larger amounts of other vaccines in the second quarter of the year.