We’re just 3 weeks behind the Italians
Ex-Health Committee head says we must act quicker
‘We need to be more urgent’
A GP AND former head of the Oireachtas Health Committee has said Ireland urgently needs to shut down schools to stop the coronavirus spreading, and that it was ‘absolutely crazy’ to allow racing in Cheltenham in the UK this week.
Dr Michael Harty, who decided not to seek a return to the Dáil in the last election so he could focus on his medical practice, said Ireland is just three weeks behind Italy in terms of infections and must act immediately.
The former Independent TD added that the country must move from the containment phase to the delay phase and that this must include ‘social distancing’, including closing down schools and other places where the disease is likely to spread. ‘Italy had its first death about three weeks ago and now regrets that it didn’t move quicker on social distancing,’ he told the Irish Daily Mail.
He said he understood closing schools could put further strain on the healthcare system, as some medical staff may have to mind their children at home, but that it was still the safer option.
Dr Harty also described the move to allow the Cheltenham racing festival to open on Tuesday as ‘absolutely crazy’. ‘No way should it have been allowed. You have 60,000 people gathering in one spot and with the best will in the world, you won’t be able to have good hand hygiene, not just as the races but in the hotels and bars which are part and parcel of it,’ he said.
‘The HSE is saturated at the best of times; it doesn’t have the capacity for an onslaught.’
Dr Harty has returned to working as a full-time GP in Kilmihil, Co. Clare, and said there is a ‘divergence of approach’ between public health doctors and infectious disease experts, with the experts urging for greater social distancing.
He said: ‘Italy has now introduced it in quite stark ways, with schools and colleges closed and travel substantially curtailed.
‘So we had our first death in Ireland and we are still doing contract tracing of people who had close proximity to people who have the coronavirus. Contact tracing alone is not going to stop the spread of the disease.’
Dr Harty, who was instrumental in creating the ten-year plan for the HSE called Sláintecare, said that Ireland will likely have a peak in cases in three weeks’ time.
‘In Italy, you suddenly had a lot of people coming to hospitals at the same time and it overwhelmed their health service. People in Ireland will get the disease, but we want to ensure that they don’t all get it at the same time, which is why we need to be more urgent in our approach to social distancing,’ he said.
He added that there are three phrases to consider – containment, delay and mitigation.
‘We have to move to delay. Mitigation is basically treating people,’ he explained.
Dr Harty said he has been reading an account from an Italian doctor who said that, three weeks ago, coronavirus patients were getting all the care they could want in intensive care – but now, the intensive care units are so overwhelmed, doctors are having to decide who will live if they are given a bed.