WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Daily Covid-19 round-up

Here is your daily Covid-19 (coronavirus) round-up March 30, 2020:

• Government Ministers are pleading with employers to reconsider making employees redundant at this time. An additional 283,000 have applied for the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment scheme, with 16,000 businesses applying for the employer wage subsidy scheme as of Friday, March 27.

• People are uncertain as to whether or not the 2KM radius applies to food shopping, exercise, and pharmacy visits. This radius only applies to exercise only, yet government officials have taken to Twitter to clarify as there was some confusion around this.  Taoiseach Leo Varadkar confirmed that this does not apply to shopping or essential pharmacy visits.

• The HSE outlines what cocooning is, and how people can achieve it. Cocooning is a measure to protect people who are over 70 years of age or those who are extremely medically vulnerable by minimising all interaction between them and others.

• Concerns for the elderly increase as 22 clusters of Covid-19 have been located in nursing home across Ireland. The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) pin pointed a large proportion of these clusters as being in the East of the country as of March 26 2020. 

• Possible new measures for hospital admission for the upcoming weeks will help the HSE manage bed availability during the surge. An announcement is expected on new admission measures for hospitals later this evening. This announcement is expected to detail the amount of acute hospital admissions and admissions to Intensive Care Units (ICU) during the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Minister Simon Harris has stated that Ireland cannot return to normal after Easter Sunday as the Covid-19 virus will be in Ireland for the foreseeable future. Although the nation was recommended to stay in for a two week period and only allowed to leave their homes for essential purposes such as food shopping and for medical reasons, the Minister does not believe that Ireland should return to normal after April 12. 

• The Sexual Health Centre has launched the SafeRsex campaign to highlight the importance of taking additional precautionary measures regarding sexual activity during the COVID-19 outbreak.