‘Highly likely’ Omicron will arrive in NI

professor of molecular virology at Queen’s, also said it was “highly likely” Omicron will be detected here.

He added: “All the other variants that have been circulating have ended up in Northern Ireland.”

In the Republic, virologist Dr Cillian De Gascun said the case was identified within the last week. He added: “So it is a current case if you like rather than an older case.”

Ireland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan issued a renewed plea for vigilance following the announcement from public health body NPHET.

He said: “The key focus for all of us must be to continue to suppress the current wave of infection driven by Delta. The measures with which we are all so familiar have worked against previous variants and they can successfully suppress transmission of the Delta variant and we are optimistic that they will work against the Omicron variant.”

Justice Minister Helen Mcentee said the Irish Government would act on the information, but played down any prospect of a new lockdown. And Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has told Fine Gael TDS he is “sceptical” new restrictions would be warranted at this time.

At the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting last night, he said the situation was stable or improving slightly and “we were doing substantially better than NPHET optimistic models and projections in terms of cases, patients, ICU and deaths”. However, he added there was a concern the situation has stabilised at a high level and if things went wrong in the run up to Christmas, they would go wrong from a very high base.