Hold firm and #stayhome.

That’s the advice from the Government today, amid mounting public and industry pressure to skip large parts of the phased roadmap for reopening Ireland.

Tweeting an image of a bar chart showing how quickly the virus spread to become the leading cause of deaths globally, Health Minister Simon Harris asked his followers to consider it as calls to speed up the reopening of the country grow louder.

The chart demonstrates how Covid-19 rapidly overtook the leading causes of death, including malaria, malnutrition, homicide, Parkinson’s Disease, drowning, homicide and influenza, within weeks, as the pandemic took hold.

“Worth a look -frightening how #Covid19 with such rapid speed became such a major cause of death globally,” Minister Harris said in a tweet.

“Would be dangerous for any country to bow to pressure to do more quickly in terms of reopening than is safe to do. Such a delicate balance.”

Worth a look -frightening how #Covid19 with such rapid speed became such a major cause of death globally. Would be dangerous for any country to bow to pressure to do more quickly in terms of reopening than is safe to do. Such a delicate balance pic.twitter.com/udMBmqgfJQ

— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) May 31, 2020

House parties ‘a disaster’ for controlling Covid-19

Speaking on Morning Ireland this morning, infectious disease expert Sam McConkey urged anyone planning an indoor house party in the coming weeks to reconsider, describing group gatherings of people who do not live together as a “disaster”.

The advice is still to maintain 2m social distancing and avoid unnecessary journeys wherever possible.

As part of Phase Two of the roadmap, which begins on June 8th, you will be able to travel up to 20 kilometres away from your home as opposed to the 5km limit, which has been in place since May 5th.

Looking ahead to the coming weeks, Professor McConkey said a day at the beach is much less risky than a get-together at home, given the good weather and sea breeze, but warned that if people begin travelling then the virus could be spread into counties that have so far managed to avoid any coronavirus cases.