With highest infection rate, Monaghan paying price for conflicting restrictions

IRELAND’S highest infection rate of Covid19 has been in Co Monaghan for the last three weeks, but this stark statistic is no surprise to the health professionals who warned it would happen.

Doctors have been crying out for an all-island approach since the pandemic began as they watched conflicting restrictions north and south wreak havoc on the Border counties.

The decision to allow people to continue travelling into the North from the UK at Christmas, at a time when the Republic banned flights, may prove to be the most detrimental yet.

Early evidence suggests the UK variant of coronavirus, which has now taken hold in Ireland, may be more deadly, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Friday.

On December 22, Dr Illona Duffy of the Swan Park Family Practice in Monaghan pleaded for anyone travelling from the UK to isolate for 14 days.

“Getting a [negative] test does NOT shorten this, I repeat you MUST isolate alone in your bedroom for two weeks. No exceptions,” she tweeted.

The new strain was already beginning to make a mark on her practice. Covid-19 patients were presenting in greater numbers – and with different symptoms than before.

Criticised

She criticised the continuation of travel with no mandatory quarantining as “sheer idiocy”.

“People were travelling into Belfast when they couldn’t go to Dublin,” Dr Duffy told the Irish Independent.

“We are a county which has struggled from the beginning with high infection rates and having varying lockdowns on both sides of the Border didn’t help.

“I was tweeting before Christmas about how we were seeing more of the UK variant, and we could definitely see how the virus changed.

“It was sweeping through whole houses and spreading much faster.

“The symptoms have absolutely changed.

“We’re seeing less people with coughs now and more people with severe nasal congestion.”

All frontline staff at the Swan Park Family Practice got their first Covid-19 vaccine at the weekend after the local nursing home had some vials left over.

The relief was palpable. “Since the new rules for close contact testing were introduced, we’ve had a few worrying experiences,” Dr Duffy said.

“We had a patient in for a check-up and two days later they developed symptoms and tested positive, so my nurse and I were exposed.”

“The patient was told they didn’t need to give our details as they only needed to contact who they were with on the day they developed symptoms,” she added.

At the time of writing, Monaghan’s incidence rate is 2,134 per 100,000 of the population.

One in 44 people in the county have been infected in the last two weeks.

Christmas socialising, out-of-sync restrictions and cross-border travel have all played a factor in the surge in new infections, and efforts are under way to combat that.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said it was working closely with An Garda Síochána to try to stop people travelling for nonessential reasons.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd told the Irish Independent: “We have a joint interest for people to stay at home and protect both our health services and save lives on both sides of the Border. You will continue to see police patrols and checkpoints across Northern Ireland, including in Border areas, and we will engage with the public to ensure that everyone understands and is adhering to the public health regulations.”

“We will continue to engage with people and explain what we need them to do and encourage them to follow the restrictions that are in place. But for the small numbers of people who are continuing to ignore the restrictions, it is inevitable that we will have to move to enforcement through the issue of penalty notices,” he warned.