(Alliance News) - Ireland's coronavirus lockdown is to be extended by a number of weeks until March 5.
Irish Premier Micheal Martin said lockdown restrictions are having a positive impact, forcing case numbers down.
However, Martin said that the country cannot give the virus or its variants any space.
"Therefore, the government has decided to to extend all of the current level five restrictions until March 5, with a view to crushing the numbers of those contracting the disease, and in turn the numbers needing hospitalisation and intensive care," he said.
The new measures include mandatory quarantine at a designated facility for people who arrive in Ireland without a negative PCR test taken in the past 72 hours.
Visa-free short term travel from South Africa and South America is suspended until at least March 5, the Taoiseach added.
"In other cases, people will be required to quarantine at home," Martin said.
He added: "These regulations will apply to anyone who travels into Ireland, from an airport or port on the island, including ports and airports in Northern Ireland."
Ireland's current level 5 restrictions will apply in line with Northern Ireland.
It comes as the number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 remains high, with more than double the number compared with the first wave last year.
The number of hospital staff currently off because of coronavirus also remains high across the health service.
In addition, hundreds of nurses have been redeployed to intensive care (ICU) because of the rising number of Covid patients.
While the number of patients is beginning to ease, with 1,823 in hospital on Tuesday morning, Anne O'Connor, the HSE's chief operations officer, said it is still a very high number.
"Clearly that puts a huge demand on our hospital system," she told RTE Morning Ireland.
"We have still got a high level of absenteeism among all of our staff, and we are having to redeploy staff from across the hospitals into ICU.
"At the minute we have anything between 300 and 350 nurses redeployed into ICU to be able to cope with that very high number of 217 (patients)."
Gardai have also set up checkpoints outside airports to establish why people are leaving and coming back into the country.
Meanwhile, opposition parties have said the government measures do not go far enough to curb the spread of the virus and prevent cases from surging again.
People Before Profit has repeatedly called for the government to abandon its Living With Covid plan, and replace it with a zero-Covid strategy.
The party's parliamentary representative for the Dun Laoghaire constituency, Richard Boyd Barrett, said the government's plan to deal with the virus has "failed spectacularly".
"This week, we are circulating a motion to all parties in the Dail, which spells out what a zero-Covid strategy is, and asking people to sign up to a motion to pursue this," he said.
"It is absolutely clear that the Living With Covid strategy pursued by the government has failed spectacularly.
"Trying to live alongside Covid is like trying to play footsie with a tiger. It just does not work.
"We need to end the ad hoc, piecemeal reactive approach to deal with Covid-19 as it has failed us and instead pursue a comprehensive alternative zero-Covid strategy transmission and allow us to get past this terrible cycle of surge and lockdown.
"If we pursue a zero-Covid strategy it's possible to save the summer."
Labour's Duncan Smith said the party is calling for a national suppressive strategy to take on Covid-19.
Speaking outside Leinster House on Tuesday, he said: "(It's) not just flatten the curve, but to crush it and keep it there.
"It's going to require a long-term, co-ordinated approach from government.
"Mandatory hotel quarantining is an element of this, and we are aware now government is going to bring an element of that in.
"For us, it's not enough, and in terms of what the tanaiste (Leo Varadkar) said, that it will take a number of weeks to get going, makes no sense to us, they haven't explained why that is the case.
"We believe we can get it going a lot quicker."
source: PA
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