The 5 at 5: Thursday

The 5 at 5 Five minutes, five stories, five o’clock…

EVERY WEEKDAY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you the five biggest stories of the day.

1. #ICELAND MODEL: Leo Varadkar has said that Ireland will extend mandatory hotel quarantine more widely in the coming weeks and will also give consideration to a dual-testing model employed in Iceland.

2. #CLOSE CONTACTS: The HSE has announced that it will start testing close contacts of confirmed cases of Covid-19 again from tomorrow.

3. #JOSH DUNNE: The family of a 16-year-old boy who died in Dublin’s north inner city on Tuesday night have paid tribute to him as a “caring, amazing boy” who was “a dreamer and a do-er”.

4. #VACCINATED: The Minister for Health has confirmed that over 160,000 vaccine doses have now been administered in Ireland, including second doses for 13,800 frontline healthcare workers.

5. #ASTRAZENECA: Germany’s vaccine commission has said it is recommending the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine for under-65-year-olds only due to insufficient data on its effectiveness on older people.