Testing of close contacts of confirmed Covid-19 cases is resuming today

It was stopped at the end of December due to a sharp increase in cases. 

Meanwhile, the country's Chief Medical Officer says Ireland cannot pursue a 'zero Covid' strategy.

The strategy advocates driving down virus cases to zero, and has been successful in New Zealand. 

However, Dr Tony Holohan says this would not be possible in Ireland: 

"We are a small economy dependent on those links that we have built very carefully as a country with the rest of Europe, and dependent on them for a variety of economic and social and cultural reasons, dependent on them for basic foodstuffs, for basic medications and other essential things as part of daily living, we simply couldn't realistically seal the borders of this country and stop the movement of people in and out."