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Strong suppression of Covid-19 needs to be maintained and it may be too early to consider reopening the country, according to Anthony Staines, professor of health systems at DCU’s School of Nursing and Human Sciences.
The number of cases of the virus is coming down very slowly and it is going to be challenging as the country is still uncertain how the virus is being contained, he said.
The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) is not being unreasonable to express concern about what would happen if the country opened up, he told Newstalk Breakfast.
On Sunday, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said Ireland is ahead of the most optimistic scenarios for the decline in Covid-19 case numbers meaning that the country is now in a “very positive position to talk about May, June, July and the easing of restrictions”.
“We are ahead of the best-case scenario we were given four weeks ago” for cases of the virus and the R number or rate at which the virus is reproduced remained below 1.”
This “puts us in a very positive position to talk about May, June, July” and the easing of restrictions, the Minister said.
Nphet reported one further death related to Covid-19 and 269 new cases of the virus on Sunday. This is the lowest number of case reported in one day since December 14th, and marks the continuation of a positive recent trend of declining cases which has increased optimism around the further easing of restrictions.
The number of Covid-19 patients in hospital also fell this weekend to its lowest level since October, with 181 people being treated for the virus.
Speaking on Monday, Prof Staines – a founder of the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group (Isag), which is calling for a “zero Covid” suppression strategy – said other countries that had been successful in suppressing the virus had increased public health services and used aggressive contact tracing. “We’re not doing any of these things,” he said.
Two-day contact tracing had been “an utter waste of time” that missed transmission patterns and identification of contacts, he said.
The country is going to count the economic cost of the virus while people continued to get sick, which means there is a strong case for controlling and suppressing numbers. “Strong suppression is the name of the game,” he said.
Vaccines
Mr Donnelly, meanwhile, has said he expects a recommendation “in the coming days” on whether to extend the interval between the first and second dose of Covid-19 vaccines from four weeks to a longer period of up to 12 weeks.
Mr Donnelly on Sunday said he was waiting on a recommendation from the State’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn and the vaccination taskforce on the matter.
“If we have a recommendation in place tomorrow that is something that we can bring to Government [this week],” he said.
“The data we are getting back from the vaccination programme in Ireland and from around the world is that even the first dose of the two-dose vaccine is showing absolutely incredible positive success in terms of reduction of cases and hospitalisations.”
Mr Donnelly said the issue being examined was what impact would result from increasing the interval from four weeks to eight or 12 weeks.
However, he confirmed the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) had not been asked about the matter and there was no memo being written on it “at the moment”.
Mr Donnelly was speaking after dropping plans to explore the merits of under-30s being vaccinated ahead of older age groups – a proposal that provoked a furious response from Cabinet colleagues.
After what he described as a “rocky week” for the vaccination programme, Mr Donnelly on Sunday said Dr Glynn had informed him there was no evidence to support such a change. Dr Glynn sent his written response on Friday night.
“There is no plan to do this and there is no proposal to do this,” Mr Donnelly told Newstalk.
“All I was doing was checking in with the deputy CMO to say where are we at on the transmission data. He said it isn’t there and that’s it.”
A new oversight group has been formed by the Taoiseach in an effort to avoid some of the serious political and logistical differences that have arose in rolling out the programme.
The Vaccine Rollout Group, chaired by the State’s top civil servant Martin Fraser, is being put in place to ensure that all conceivable implications of any change in the vaccination programme are fully considered.