Varadkar’s Covid towels claim ‘wrong’

A LEADING virologist has dismissed suggestions made by Leo Varadkar who said that Covid-19 in private households was being spread on ‘towels, spoons and doorbells’.

The Fine Gael leader made the comments during a radio interview just hours before household visits were banned across the country.

The latest data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) found that there were 352 clusters in private homes for the week ending October 10.

Speaking to Today FM l ast Thursday, Mr Varadkar said Covid19 cases in households are being spread in different ways. These included, he argued, multiple people pressing doorbells and the sharing of towels and cutlery. ‘At home, people aren’t [as conscious of guidelines],’ Mr Varadkar said.

‘ It’s the few friends over for drinks. It is people coming over for a cup of tea. It is playdates. They are a major cause of transmission of the virus. People are getting too close to each other, they’re staying together for too long.

‘They’re passing the virus by pressing the doorbell, by sharing a spoon, by using the bathroom and leaving it on a towel. All those things spread disease and that is why we have had to do this.’

But Dr Kim Roberts, Assistant Professor of Virology at Trinity College Dublin, said the chance of contracting Covid-19 from passing someone a spoon was small.

‘The vast majority of transmission appears to be short-range respiratory droplet transmission,’ she told the Irish Daily Mail.

‘At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of worry about how long the virus could survive on surfaces.

‘We now think that it’s quite a small proportion of transmission events that take place via that kind of transmission route.

‘We don’t want to worry people and have people washing down door handles every half hour.

‘For me, you can’t wipe down all the surfaces; it’s not feasible and it’s not reasonable.’