Small groups allowed to meet in Northern Ireland

People who do not live together have finally been allowed to meet in small groups in Northern Ireland.

Up to six friends can now gather outdoors, as long as social distancing is observed, as coronavirus restrictions in the region began to ease on Monday. Indoor get-togethers of family members from different households are still not allowed.

Churchgoers are also now allowed to pray alone, while in-person Christian services are still on hold. Many churches continue to hold services behind closed doors, with proceedings broadcast online.

Weddings involving someone with a terminal illness can now be held.

“These have been hard-won freedoms and when you do exercise those freedoms, it is important no one else is put at risk,” Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s first minister, told her daily news briefing.

The lifting of restrictions broadly reflect those in Ireland, but the omission of any dates for future action has raised the chances of different parts of the island reopening at different times.

The United Kingdom’s constituent parts of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken a more conservative approach than England after Prime Minister Boris Johnson encouraged some people to return to work last week.

The devolved government’s decision on Monday to ease the measures meant both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland entered the first phase of their exit plans in step with each other, as garden centres and golf courses reopened on both sides of the open border.

Outdoor work at building sites, already allowed in the north, resumed in the Irish Republic. Photographs of long queues at reopened hardware stores in Dublin were shared on social media, but these were mainly to comply with in-store distancing requirements. The Retail Ireland industry group reported that its members had experienced “brisk but manageable trade”.

The number of confirmed cases in Northern Ireland rose by 16 to 4,401, with related deaths up six on Monday to 482.

In Ireland, which has two and a half times the population and has tested more than six times as many patients, cases increased by 88 to 24,200. Ten of the country’s 1,547 deaths were reported on Sunday.

Monday was the second day in a row in which the number of new cases fell below 100, and the four related deaths were the lowest number of daily reported fatalities since March 27, the day Ireland announced its lockdown.

Ireland’s Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan said two of those deaths had occurred over the weekend, with the other two dating back to April.

If the number of new cases remained at the current low level by the middle to end of next week, he said he would be increasingly confident that Ireland could enter phase two of its reopening plan, among the most conservative in Europe, as scheduled on June 8.