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DUBLIN — Ireland’s government has been hit by its first confirmed COVID-19 case shortly after the Cabinet met to approve a new nationwide lockdown.
Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue confirmed Wednesday that he has tested positive for the virus and is self-isolating at home. The news means that the rest of Ireland’s 15-member Cabinet and other officials are being tested and are minimizing their own contacts pending their results.
They all are presumed to have come into close contact with McConalogue during Tuesday’s three-hour Cabinet meeting at which the fresh lockdown was approved. It was held in Dublin Castle rather than in the much closer quarters of the Cabinet table in Prime Minister Micheál Martin’s office, in an attempt to reduce infection risk.
McConalogue twice tested negative last week before and after he attended a two-day meeting of the EU’s Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels. But he tested positive after taking a post-Cabinet test Tuesday. It’s the first positive coronavirus test recorded by a member of the Irish government.
The country’s 160-member lower house of parliament has been meeting since July in the 3,000-seat Dublin Convention Centre to ensure sufficient physical distancing. Besides McConalogue, the only other member to have been confirmed as contracting COVID-19 is Mary Lou McDonald, leader of the main opposition Sinn Féin party, who was stricken during the early weeks of the pandemic but recovered in April.
Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting approved an accelerated return to a national lockdown, starting on Christmas Eve when all hospitality and personal services firms, such as restaurants and hairdressers, must shut by 3 p.m. It will be Ireland’s third national lockdown and comes just three weeks after the previous restrictions were eased.
Family gatherings that had been approved to run until the first week of January now must end on the day after Christmas, called St. Stephen’s Day in Ireland.
Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who is among those being tested Wednesday, says restaurants and other social venues may not be allowed to reopen until March, depending on how quickly Ireland is able to source and deliver coronavirus vaccines.
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