Donegal is being put to level three COVID restrictions as early as tonight.
The cabinet is meeting over the phone this afternoon to consider advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team.
The latest figures for Donegal show the county has moved above 122 cases per 100,000.
For contrast when NPHET made the decision to move Dublin to level three last week the capital had a lower 14 day incident rate of 114.2.
The figures for Derry and Strabane in Northern Ireland, neighboring Donegal, have now hit 141.4 cases per 100,000.
The cabinet is meeting in-corporeally this evening to discuss the rapid escalation.
===
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said that the Covid-19 figures for Dublin are beginning to stabilise and that the same needs to happen elsewhere in the country,
"Dublin as of last night was at 140 per 100,000 for the last 14 days, in the last seven days that figure was down to 73, essentially what that means is Dublin looks like it's beginning to stabilise, that's what we want to see around the rest of the country as well."
Speaking on national radio, the Minister also said there was a need to ensure more qualifying nurses stay in the country and that the HSE needs to become less reliant on nurses coming into the country to work.
This cannot be achieved in a short time frame, and the Winter Plan will be one of the ways to accelerate that situation..
In the meantime the HSE will be contracting private providers to deal with public cases in a bid to reduce waiting lists. “The initial forecasting I've seen is that even with this Winter plan, the number of people waiting for elective care could go up, but this Winter plan is 15 times larger than last year.”
Mr Donnelly defended the country’s testing and tracing system saying it was one of the best in the world, but he acknowledged the need to make it “better and better”, but it was something on which the country should be proud.
The Minister also said that the health service’s diagnostic suites were not working 24/7 , but that to get it to full capacity would require extra staff.
On the issue of his own health following a negative Covid-19 test, Mr Donnelly said he was feeling a lot better and planned to be back in his office next Monday morning. “This is just the world we live in, I have been working from home, doing full days, I would like nothing more to have been at the launch of the Winter Plan.”
