‘OUR ROADMAP EXIT IS LIKE THE TITANIC GOING TOO FAST WITHOUT A RUDDER’
PROFESSOR: WE MUST LEARN FROM MISTAKES
◼ ANOTHER five deaths were reported from Covid-19 yesterday, bringing the total to 1,705. The Department of Health also announced a further 46 cases, bringing the total number of cases to 25,295. Hospitalisation has been required in 13% of all cases, with 416 sent to intensive care.
A third of cases – 8,123 – have occurred in healthcare workers, with seven of these dying. Unknown community transmission accounts for 37% of cases, followed by close contact, 60%, and travel abroad, 2%. No-one under 15 has died of the disease here, while the highest number of deaths – 636 – was among over-85s.
AN infectious diseases expert has shared what we can learn from our knowledge of the virus so far based on the data we now have, how we can prepare for a possible second phase and why it’s best to eliminate the virus, as South Korea and New Zealand have done, instead of speeding through our reopening ‘roadmap’ while the virus is still circulating in the community.
DECISIVENESS
According to Professor Gerry Killeen, AXA Research Chair in Applied Pathogen Ecology in UCC, Ireland needs to learn from its mistakes.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘We know now we need to be more decisive. January would have been a great time to close the nursing homes to visitors, even February would have been good.
‘There were weeks where we hummed and hawed and left the pubs open, that allowed the virus to quadruple in size.
‘You have to be decisive, that’s Outbreak 101, you have to act quickly. Other cultures didn’t look at this and say, “What is the minimum we have to do?”
‘They looked at it and said, “What is the maximum we can do to get this over with faster”.
‘China’s response was, “Shut everything off immediately and then, once you get a handle on it, decide what you can reopen”.
‘We could be down to zero cases and we could have 1,000 people still with us if we’d made a decision in January, we would be in an elimination
scenario now.’
WE GOT LUCKY
While we could have performed better, Ireland is in a much better position than the likes of Brazil and the US. However, we were also lucky that the virus had an initial reproduction rate of four.
Prof. Killeen said: ‘With an emerging pathogen like this, it really could have been worse. If the virus has a reproduction rate of six, it would still be growing now.
‘What we did was enough to tip this thing into shrinkage. Our shrinkage rates aren’t bad. But they’re not as good as China or New Zealand or any of those places.
‘China got the reproductive number down to 0.2. We could have done better but we can make choices and we’ve averted the worst of the first wave. Now we’ve got to make a decision
on what we do next.’
WE CAN’T POWER THROUGH THE ROADMAP
Although our case numbers are lowering this can change very rapidly, according to
Prof. Killeen.
The three-week break in between phases in our roadmap was there to allow for swift action in order to target a potential surge. Merging phases will make possible further outbreaks difficult to target, he warns. ‘Unravelling restrictions is asking for trouble,’ he said. ‘We’re going too quickly through the roadmap. When we see the numbers on the Six O’Clock news every night, those numbers reflect what the virus was doing three weeks ago.
‘The numbers going down at the minute means nothing untoward happened in Phase 1. We could be well into Phase 4 before we realise that something went wrong in Phase 2. It really is the Titanic going too fast with too small a rudder. ‘By the time we see a second wave we may be well into it and not in a position to change course. At the moment, we’re just driving a bit too fast to put the brakes on if there is a surge in the community again.’
ELIMINATING THE VIRUS
While our current strategy is to live alongside the virus, more than 1,000 people, among them some of the top minds in Ireland’s health and scientific community, recently signed an open letter to the State calling for us to instead work to eliminate the virus.
The letter, signed by Prof. Killeen, follows the lines taken by the likes of New Zealand, Greece, Finland, Norway and Taiwan, which have completely eliminated the virus and are now working to maintain this through an aggressive testing and isolation operation, in combination with mask wearing and social distancing. They are also testing visitors at airports and again at their accommodation.
This will result in a quicker restoration to normal life, freedom to travel and a fully up and running economy.
However, this is not what we have put in practice to date.