The UK variant is now the dominant virus and we can see just how difficult it is to get the numbers down. Yesterday, there were over 1,000 positive cases, six weeks after the level 5 restrictions were imposed, with another six weeks in level 5 all but announced. There were just under 1,000 people in hospital yesterday, with the numbers in ICU remaining in the low 200s and, sadly, we are still hearing of high numbers of deaths. RTÉ's "Prime Time" programme from Tallaght hospital earlier this week was a reminder of the huge physical and emotional cost to our healthcare workers, which is, clearly, totally unfair and utterly unsustainable.

While the positive numbers have fallen from the shocking peak in mid-January, suppressing the virus is going to be really difficult. That is all the more reason that we cannot risk importing new variants that could be vaccine-resistant. I raised the issue of international travel with the Tánaiste three weeks ago and I asked about quarantine. He said it would be disproportionate and unworkable. He also told me that the majority of people travelling were doing so for essential purposes, which is clearly not the case. I wonder where he got that information. The Government has since announced that it intends to introduce quarantine and also some additional measures. However, the practical aspects of quarantine lag far behind the announcement. The expectation was that we would be all in here passing the legislation that was needed and that there would be some forward planning for worst-case scenarios, which obviously has not happened.

Test, trace and isolate are key parts of our strategy in the suppression of the virus, but the Tánaiste has said that it is impossible when the numbers get very high to use that effectively as a strategy. We can see that there are two ways of dealing with this virus until the vaccine gives us protection. One is to go for near-zero suppression, with aggressive test, trace and isolate together with strict measures in place to prevent further variants arriving into the country. However, such measures have to be workable; they cannot be self-governing. The other way is rolling lockdowns, with all the damage that they bring. There is no easy solution to this. There is damage no matter what. It is a question of limiting that damage, but it seems that we have a bit of both.

We are hearing that the plan for living with Covid is due to be updated. What does the Government mean by "living with Covid"? Instead of dates, can the Tánaiste state what that looks like in numbers? Is it near-zero cases or is it cases in the low hundreds? We can see when it is low hundreds how quickly that can escalate. The day the UK flights were halted in December, there were 484 cases, 200 people were in hospital and 31 were in ICU. We have seen what happened since. I have a few specific questions in this regard. If there is to be a further six-week lockdown, what is the aim in terms of numbers? Has that been modelled and is it known what activities are most dominant in terms of the spread of the virus? The public needs specific rather than general information.

I thank the Deputy for her questions. To clarify, and I have clarified it before, when I used the term "disproportionate", what I was referring to was the fact that it could be argued, and I think it will be argued, that it is disproportionate to impose mandatory hotel quarantine on people who do not have Covid when we do not do that to people who do have Covid. At the moment, there are lots of people in the country who have tested positive for Covid and, fortunately, none of them is in mandatory hotel quarantine. That is where we may very well run into a very genuine legal issue around proportionality, because the vast majority of people travelling in from overseas do not have Covid and they have a test to say they do not, whereas we know there are hundreds of people every day in Ireland testing positive for Covid and we do not mandatorily quarantine them. Obviously, anything that could save hundreds of lives or thousands of lives is proportionate in my view. The disproportionality point is a different point and perhaps is one that we will hear about in the courts at some point in the future.

In regard to cases, it is important to say that we have gone from a situation where we were seeing 6,000 or 7,000 cases a day to 1,000 or fewer a day now. That is a very significant reduction in the caseload. The number in hospital is below 1,000 and the number of people in ICU is about 170. While we have seen a very significant decrease from the peak of the third wave, these figures are still higher than the peak of the first wave and we have a long way to go yet before we are in a position to ease restrictions substantially. We need to get down to much lower numbers than we have now.

We have not agreed an exact number. I know why the Deputy would like that. It is something that I would have liked in the past. However, the advice we have from NPHET is very strong on this, namely, that it is very wrong to pick particular exact numbers and that we need to look at a number of things in the round. It is not just the five-day or seven-day case number average, the positivity rate, the number of people in ICU, the number of people in hospital or the number of hospital beds available. We have to look at all of these things and using one or two metrics, NPHET advises, is too crude. The Government has accepted that advice.

In terms of strategies, I do not think it is a choice between one or two strategies. There are a lot of slogans floating around and there are many different strategies and sub-strategies. It is the detail that is important. There really is not any strategy, unfortunately, that avoids the risk of rolling lockdowns or snap lockdowns. We saw in Perth the other day that one or two cases of community transmission led to a five-day snap lockdown there. In our context, with our geography, with the Border, with people coming in in the front of trucks and the back of trucks, if we applied the same policy here, we would probably have snap lockdowns every week, every two weeks or every three weeks. We have to bear in mind that our geography does affect us.

In terms of living with Covid, what that means is suppression. It means reducing numbers as low as we can so that we can open society and the economy in a way that is sustainable. Yes, there is modelling done on this but, no, we have not picked any exact numbers. NPHET advised that for reasons I explained.

When the word "disproportionate" was used by the Tánaiste, the way the public hears it is that it is okay for people to go on holiday but they cannot send their kids to school. That is the way it is heard. It is important that there is an understanding of just exactly how the public is hearing some of this. Indeed, a further six-week lockdown has all but been announced. It came from leaks from two parliamentary party meetings. That needs to be managed much differently. It is not fair that the public hears in that particular way.

The public need an expectation of exactly what the milestones are in reducing this virus and what might be open in terms of schools or if we are going to open a lot more. We can only do that by getting it right down. We have to be straight with people on that.

I am sure the Deputy will agree and appreciate that the way things are heard is not always what was said or what was meant. That applies even without being misrepresented. Something a person says or means can be heard in a different way. Anyway, I am happy once again to clarify the point. Anything that will save hundreds or thousands of lives is proportionate in my view. We may run into a legal issue around proportionality. I have explained to the House that this may arise.

I agree with the Deputy's question and comment. We need to get numbers down as low as possible before we can safety reopen our society and economy. I believe that is what all of us in the House want. There is little point in reopening things one then has to close three weeks later. That is why we need to get numbers down as low as we possibly can. We simply do not know what that is in the current context.

A question was asked about international travel. As Deputies know, the Government has already introduced polymerase chain reaction, PCR, testing. We did that in January. We have already introduced mandatory home quarantine. We did that some weeks ago. We will be extending the number of countries included in the category 2 list. These are countries for which mandatory hotel quarantine is required. There are 18 countries, including 16 in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Austria and the United Arab Emirates. They have been added to Brazil and South Africa.