Who is popular today?

It’s - yet another - crucial few days for the Government’s Covid policy. But what are the main factors that will influence key decisions about to be taken?
Just what is happening today?
Two key meetings are taking place on Monday - the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) is first up, which got underway this morning.
Later, the Cabinet subcommittee on Covid, consisting of party leaders and key senior Ministers will meet with senior members of Nphet to discuss the potential for relaxing restrictions from April 5th, Easter Monday.
Cabinet will meet tomorrow to sign off on the next steps, but the substantial changes are likely to be agreed in principle tonight.
What’s up for discussion?
The main moving parts haven’t changed since the Government published its “Path Ahead” document on February 23rd. The three areas flagged for potential relaxation then were construction, outdoor activities and the 5km “exercise limit”.
Alongside these three areas, a parallel process has been underway around the resumption of education. The most recent “big” day on that was March 15th, when most primary school children resumed classes alongside 5th years. Today, remaining childcare services that were still closed are re-opening.
How likely are changes?
Very. But that shouldn’t be confused with the changes being very substantial. In reality, whatever is announced won’t massively change people’s day-to-day lives.
Currently, it looks like rules on meeting outdoors are to be relaxed, most likely allowing two households to mix, while some sporting activities will be permitted.
The initial focus is likely to be on children’s sport. The 5km limit is to be expanded, but it’s not decided how ambitious this will be.
Why the hesitancy?
The problem is that since early March, there’s been a flatlining, and even slight growth, in the daily case figures.
While the trajectory in hospitalisations and intensive care admissions has been more encouraging, increased movement associated with schools reopening and some slippage in compliance with distancing rules has been blamed for the stall.
The increased transmissibility of the B117 variant of coronavirus means small changes can have outsized impacts on the spread of Covid.
What about construction?
It seems to be in the balance. While Government sources say lobbying from most industry sectors has been minimal since Christmas, the building trade has been the exception, loudly making its case. Many Ministers are concerned about the impact on the housing crisis of a prolonged closure, as well as the politics of “hard cases” - people awaiting completion of a home or improvement works, who have been left stranded by the shutdown.
Against that, the Government is balancing the risk of allowing tens of thousands of workers back on site at the same time it is trying to preserve plans to resume classes for all children on April 12th.
A phased return has been mooted, with a focus on private homebuilding at first. It may be the case that construction comes back later than April 5th, but before the next “big” step, which is likely between four and six weeks later.
What about vaccines?
Notwithstanding substantial recent controversies around improper administration of doses, and the stop-start nature of the vaccination programme, there is now a reasonable level of protection among those most vulnerable to infection and death or serious disease.
However, it’s understood that internal modelling done by Nphet shows while this is likely to seriously depress deaths, the effect is less pronounced on hospitalisations and ICU admissions, as many of these occur in parts of the population that are as yet unvaccinated.
So despite vaccination, the fear is that another surge could put the hospital system under severe pressure again, even without the same level of death.
There’s also fears that widespread transmission could result in a wave of long Covid or serious infection in younger people, as even if a smaller percentage of younger people fall seriously ill, if transmission is more widespread, it could still be a big gross figure.
What is the Nphet advice likely to be?
Given the above, fairly conservative. The view among senior members of Nphet is that the much-vaunted “ramping up” of vaccination in the second quarter will make things substantially less risky in four to eight weeks’ time than they are now.
But several factors suggest the advice today will be cautious: namely, the transmissability of the variant, the legacy of Christmas still playing out across higher case numbers and elevated pressure on the health system, and the danger of these two factors to goals of keeping schools open and continuing the resumption of non-Covid healthcare.
As one senior public health source put it last week: “If (Government) do something in April that triggers a wave, they have a disaster on their hands. If they hold off until May or June, it’s a completely different risk profile”
What does this say about the overall strategy?
The strategy since Christmas has been one of incremental reopening, followed by measurement and assessment of the impact. The fact that cases plateaued after the first really meaningful changes undermines that strategy, and may herald another subtle but important shift in stance.
Many in Government believe 500-600 cases per day is as low as things can go, due to the prevalence of the variant and increased mobility associated with even minor reopening and slippages in compliance.
If that’s the case, it seems that getting the disease down to the levels seen last summer through lockdowns alone is off the table, and this suggests chips are now basically all on vaccination.
But there is still much uncertainty over how B117 and the vaccination programme will impact the relationship between cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
There is massive uncertainty, with Nphet not even fully confident on where the R number, which measures how fast the disease is spreading, is.
The estimates are between 1.0 and 1.3, but the different outcomes depending on where in that range the R number is is huge. As one well placed source put it recently: “you could be shot in the head or shot in the arm. There’s not much distance between them but it makes a big difference to the outcome”.
What are the politics of this?
Tricky, to say the least. Ministers acknowledge their room for manoeuvre is limited, but fret over political and wider public support. So, the approach is expected to be twofold: alongside some minor tweaks next week, there will be a push at cabinet to indicate the kinds of things that might be considered in the next period.
“What will May and June look like is the big thing,” said a Minister last week. Some in the coalition think it’s time to start outlining what benefits will accrue to vaccinated people in the weeks ahead, in terms of mixing and social activities.
The difficult task facing the Government is to offer some meaningful hope of better times in the not-too-distant future, but simultaneously do very little that will make a tangible difference immediately.