COP ON! WE HAVE COME TOO FAR TO GO BACK NOW
Minister joins chorus of calls from our medical experts to stop crowds gathering to drink
SIMON Harris has told revellers who blatantly ignored health warnings about the deadly Covid virus to ‘cop on’.
His comments come as a family doctor spoke out about ‘profoundly upsetting’ scenes of thousands of drinkers abandoning social distancing at the weekend.
After revelations that Dublin and Cork city centres were packed with drinkers, as the lockdown ended, a senior consultant described the scene as ‘horrendous’. And an infectious diseases expert told how the actions of a tiny minority can bring misery to the entire population.
Former health minister Mr Harris
tweeted: C’mon everyone. We’ve come too far to go back. Great to see our economy reopened and social life resuming but let’s keep using our cop on and common sense. We owe it to each other, to those families who have lost loved ones, to the local business we want to keep open and to our kids.’
Videos and images online showed a large crowd gathered on Dame Lane in Dublin, with people socialising in close proximity.
Only pubs that serve a substantial meal, valued at €9, are allowed to open, under the restrictions.
And one woman, Marion Kiely, took to social media to complain about the lack of social distancing in Cork city.
‘Encountered a similar scene in Cork yesterday, people sharing one narrow footpath, due to queues on other footpaths, and diners on the street,’ she said. While another Twitter user revealed she was ‘shocked’ by the lack of social distancing in Cork while visiting her parents at the weekend.
Infectious diseases expert at University College Cork, Professor Gerard Killeen, told the Irish Daily Mail that the small number of people who gathered for drinking can still cause huge problems for the rest of the country.
‘Even if you take all those people... they are still a tiny minority of the population of Ireland. It’s just, the tiny minority pose a huge threat to the other 4.9million,’ said Prof. Killeen.
‘The golden rule of elimination epidemiology is that it is not the average you need to worry about, it is the extremes,’ he said.
‘If there is one Covid-19 case in that crowd that is going to probably cost somebody their life. If there is one case in there, there is no way you contact trace that. By the time anybody could get any handle on that you are at over 100 infections, and that means one out of those is going to die,’ he said.
GP Dr Maitiú Ó Tuathail said that on Saturday night many areas of Dublin were ‘packed with people’. He was finishing up his shift and was driving through the city centre when he saw places crowded with people.
He told RTÉ Radio 1’s Brendan O’Connor show: ‘The best way I can describe it is, it felt like the All-Ireland football final night and it felt like Dublin had won.
‘That was the vibe. It was just completely rammed. It was a festival atmosphere.’
He found it ‘profoundly upsetting’ and felt like it was a ‘slap in the face to those who have broken their backs trying to keep the country working over the last three months’. He said: ‘It was really anxiety-inducing. Those on the front lines have been psychologically traumatised by what they have experienced over the last three months and they are just not ready to face into it again.
‘And after last night I really think we are weeks away from a second
‘Pubs will close again as a result’
wave.’ Dr Ó Tuathail said: ‘It is upsetting. It is going to damage the industry because what will happen is, pubs will close again as a result of this and it will inevitably lead to a second wave.
‘So it is about doing it right and it’s about everybody following the rules,’ he said.
Echoing Dr Ó Tuathail’s comments, Rheumatologist Laura
Durcan posted on Twitter on Saturday night: ‘Town is horrendous tonight. Drunken crowds everywhere. No distancing. I am not the fun police but I am really worried about two weeks’ time. Come on folks, we don’t want to do this again.’
Fears of a second wave of coronavirus come as the Department of Health reported yesterday that there were no new deaths from the virus, but 18 new cases.
This means that the total number of deaths remains at 1,741 while the number of total cases rises to 25,527. The Licenced Vintners Association (LVA), which represents Dublin pubs, said yesterday that it ‘utterly condemns’ the street drinking.
‘This is in no way acceptable and completely jeopardises public health, given the lack of social distancing observed,’ the LVA said.
It is illegal to consume takeaway alcohol within 100 metres of a bar, a rule that was widely ignored at the weekend. But the LVA claimed the off-licence trade was to blame, and not the pubs.
‘We are also aware that members of the public are bringing alcohol, purchased from off-licences with them to these locations. Such drinking in public spaces presents a terrible image of our city centre. It is potentially extremely damaging to public health,’ it said.
Following the uproar yesterday, one pub, close to where hundreds of people had been gathering, was quick to distance itself from the controversy.
Writing on Facebook, the Stag’s Head pub in Dublin city centre said it has been closed since March and will remain closed until July 20, at which point social distancing rules will be in place for all bars, not just ones serving food.