The chief executive of the Health Service Executive has said the "last big hurdle to cross" in relation to Covid-19 is the threat posed by the Delta variant.
Paul Reid was speaking at the executive's weekly update on the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Reid said the variant has "potential impacts through the rest of this month and into August and September." But he said: "We should go into it with a level of confidence, due to the vaccine programme giving even more protection every day." Mr Reid said confidence should be taken from the continuous scaling up of the testing programme and the "vast majority of the Irish public will again do the right thing." Yesterday, the Department of Health was notified of 1,378 new cases of Covid-19.