Leading expert calls for schools to close a week early

Cases have surged among primary school children in recent weeks, but the government does not plan to bring forward or extend the Christmas holidays

Ivan Perry: ‘Now it is clear there is a good level of transmission in the schools so by closing them early you'd be helping break those chains’

Irish schools should close a week earlier to help curtail the coming Christmas wave, a leading epidemiologist has said.

Ivan Perry, a professor of epidemiology at University College Cork, has warned that cases could exceed 10,000 a day in January as the new variant, Omicron, becomes dominant in Ireland.

This comes as cases in primary school-aged children have surged in recent weeks as a result of the Delta-driven fourth wave. Children aged five to 14 ...