Hospitality return delay until Summer
The Government is likely to extend the Level 5 Covid-19 restrictions until late February at next week’s Cabinet meeting..
The hospitality sector may not reopen properly until late May or early June. Restaurants and cafes had hoped to be in a position to reopen outdoors in April but this is now being viewed as increasingly unlikely.
Senior figures in the industry are understood to have recently asked Government if a reopening would be possible after the end of March when the most vulnerable people in the country have been vaccinated against Covid 19 but were told this was not likely.
This is because the risk would still be too high with around 80 per cent of the population still needing a vaccine at that stage. The emergence of new highly transmissible variants of coronavirus have further complicated matters.