Dear reader

There was some positive news out of Stormont on Thursday evening as First Minister Arlene Foster announced the reopening of garden centres and household recycling centres in Northern Ireland from Monday.

Marriage ceremonies involving someone who is suffering from a terminal illness will also be allowed from next week after ministers in the Stormont executive discussed the plan on Thursday.

Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill said the changes had been informed by medical and scientific advice.

Meanwhile, the fall-out from the postponement of the 2020 post primary transfer tests in the Province continued on Thursday as the mother of a 10-year-old child launched a legal challenge. 

The absence of many friends and relatives from funeral services here was dealt with by Northern Ireland’s Attorney General. John Larkin said there are no upper limits to how many close family members can attend the funeral of a relative..
Mr Larkin told the Committee for Justice that no specific numbers are mentioned in the social distancing regulations.

Stay safe

Alistair Bushe
Editor

• Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster has said the power-sharing executive has approved the reopening of garden centres and household recycling centres from Monday
  Marriage ceremonies involving someone who is suffering from a terminal illness will also be allowed from next week.
  Ministers in the executive discussed the plan on Thursday.
  Mrs. Foster and deputy First Minister, Michelle O'Neill briefed the media on the measures being lifted at the daily Coronavirus briefing in Belfast.
  Mrs Foster said the announcement represented “very tentative first steps toward recovery”.
  The region’s lockdown exit plan sets out a five-step process but does not assign projected dates for any of the stages.
  “We hope to reveal more about the implementation of stage one on Monday,” said Mrs Foster.
  Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill said the changes had been informed by medical and scientific advice.
  “Every decision is carefully judged on an evaluation of risk and potential benefits,” she said.Ms O’Neill said the executive would “move towards step one” of the exit plan on Monday.
  
  
• Another five people have died after testing positive for coronavirus in NI
  The latest report from the Department of Health reveals that three people died within the last 24 hours and another two people died outside that period, but were reported to the DoH.The statistics reveal that 233 men have died after contracting COVID-19.
  
  Dr Connor Bamford, a virologist at Queen’s University and an expert in respiratory illness is approving of the NI Executives plan to ease our society from lockdown
  While Boris announced unlimited exercise time outside the home, urged workers to return to their jobs if they could not work from home, and even spoke of potential school openings from June, Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill gave a clear, decelerated and measured five-step roadmap to the long road back to normality.
  They announced that their guidlines would be led by the science and by the health service’s ability to cope.
  Dr Bamford said: “I think it is great to finally have a plan and on face value this roadmap looks sensible as there are no time commitments, it is moderate and flexible.”
  
  The coronavirus “may never go away”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned
  Speaking at a briefing yesterday (Wednesday), WHO emergencies director Dr Mike Ryan warned against trying to predict when the virus would disappear.
  He added that even if a vaccine is found, controlling the virus will require a “massive effort”.
  Almost 300,000 people worldwide are reported to have died with coronavirus, and more than 4.3m cases recorded
  
  Coronavirus: Plan to have care workers sleep overnight in homes for a week at a time ‘not scuppered by unions’
  Denise Walker of the GMB said that the planned trial, which would have seen staff sleeping in care homes for a week at a time, simply had too many unresolved details.
  But she indicated that the union was not inherently opposed to the concept.
  She was reacting to claims from Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, which he had made on Facebook this week.
  He had written the following late on Monday night: “Given care homes are in the frontline in the battle against Covid, I was pleased that a number of homes had organised staff to work and sleep at the care home for one week at a time.