Public told to ‘wise up’ after Covid-19 rise as expert says we lost chance to wipe virus out
PEOPLE who are not following Covid-19 safety measures have been ordered to “wise up” in a stark warning from the Chief Medical Officer.
As it emerged that Northern Ireland has the highest infection rate out of the UK and Ireland, health officials have fired a warning shot over the deadly risk posed by the virus.
Local lockdowns and province-wide measures — including restrictions on family visits, closing pubs and restaurants and stopping car shares — are among the steps that could be put in place to help suppress Covid-19, according to Dr Michael Mcbride.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Health Minister Robin Swann poured cold water on the possibility that other restrictions, including the reopening of all pubs, will be lifted in the near future. But he said he believed lockdown measures had been relaxed at the correct time.
However, a top public health expert has said officials missed the opportunity to completely stamp out the virus here.
Professor Gabriel Scally, a member of the independent Sage committee, said: “I’m so disappointed that when the number of cases were so low that we didn’t press on and get down to zero.
“We were so close, then they could have just put in controls at the border, at airports and ferries, and we could be operating normally again.”
The comments were made as the most senior figures in the
Covid-19 battle here appeared together publicly for the first time in a number of months, signalling the level of concern there now is over the spread of the virus.
In an impassioned plea to the public to take the threat seriously, Dr Mcbride said: “It is easy to ignore the reality when it is a reality that we don’t want to live in and live through, and it’s easy to pretend that we’re through the worst and the worst wasn’t that bad after all.
“This virus doesn’t have a plan; its only plan is to spread and to survive, and whether it does that and how successful it does that is in all our hands.
“I have a simple message to those who are not following the advice: wise up. This is far too important.
“Follow the advice, watch your distance, wash your hands, wear a face covering, download the app.
“And if you have symptoms, get a test, and if you are contacted by the contact tracing service, get a test and self-isolate.”
Chief scientific officer Professor Ian Young said there had been a progressive increase in the transmission of the virus in recent weeks.
“If we go back to the end of June and the beginning of July, there were three to four cases of
Covid-19 per day in Northern Ireland,” he explained.
“That number has progressively risen and over the last few days the average number of cases per day has been over 40, peaking at around 45 a couple of days ago.”
Professor Young said it was wrong to conclude that increased testing rates was the reason for a rise in the number of people being diagnosed as positive.
He said while four times as many tests were now being carried out, “the number of cases has increased by about tenfold”.
He added: “So, increased testing as a result of our Test Trace Protect programme is not sufficient to explain the increasing number of cases that we are detecting.
“In line with that, if we go back to the beginning of July, then around 0.3% of tests — around one in 300 — were positive.
“Now we’re consistently over 1% of tests that are positive, that’s more than one in 100.”
Prof Young said we have had an infection rate of 16 per 100,000 of the population over the last seven days and 24 per 100,000 in the last fortnight.
“Those figures are slightly higher than the rest of the UK or Republic of Ireland on average, indicating that the epidemic is increasing significantly in Northern Ireland,” he added.
Prof Young also aired caution over relying on the number of hospital admissions, warning of the delay between a person contracting the virus and becoming seriously unwell.