'I don't want that to be our new normal.' Ciara Kelly says we need to talk about reducing restrictions.
reland has to stop looking at its COVID-19 rates and start easing restrictions, according to Professor Jack Lambert.
The professor of infectious diseases was speaking as a number of rules are to be scrapped in Northern Ireland.
He told Newstalk Breakfast we have to start moving on, as eliminating the virus completely is not achievable.
"This is going to be an annual pandemic, similar to influenza.
"Maybe we can cross our fingers and hope that this virus will just disappear, but it's very unlikely.
"We're in a different place then we were... in March 2020, so we need context now.
"We don't need to be looking at numbers - 'the numbers are up, the ICUs are going to become overwhelmed' - this is the rhetoric that people have been hearing over the last 18 months.
"It's the wrong message: the message is how do we live safely with COVID?
"It's not about numbers anymore, it's about every life counts: so what can we do to save our lives - psychologically, economically - and how can we make sure we're not putting the rest of Irish society at risk by infecting them with COVID.
"We still are going to have a risk, despite vaccination, of transmitting COVID".
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