PLAY DATES RULED OUT
Back to the garden centres and the golf clubs – but health chiefs warn against complacency and tell parents with young children...
THOUSANDS of adults can flock to golf courses, tennis courts and garden centres from today – but children are still not allowed on play dates, the HSE has warned parents.
The message is ‘tough’, the health executive’s Chief Clinical Officer, Dr Colm Henry, admitted – but children must wait.
From today, 1,500 businesses can open and we will be allowed to meet outside our homes in groups of four or less.
However, Dr Henry said children are still not exempt from the two-metre distance rule.
‘The message is tough. Let’s stick to that easing, gentle as it is, and that applies to all ages,’ he said.
The stance comes as Labour’s spokesman on Children, Seán Sherlock, called for an end to the confusion working parents face over childcare. The Government’s roadmap for reopening of creches and childminding
facilities has attracted strong and widespread criticism since its announcement.
The provisional proposal says workers who can abide by social distancing will be allowed back in the workplace from June 29. But creches, childminders and pre-schools will not be available for the children of all workers for another three weeks after that – until July 20, and even then they will reopen gradually.
Meanwhile, in the crucial healthcare sector, workers can have childminders in their homes from today, but other essential employees won’t be able to send their children to creches until June 8 – that’s three weeks’ time.
The different dates have led to fears of a lack of joined-upthinking, with questions being asked as to how parents can return to work from today if they won’t have services to care for their children for some time. Mr Sherlock said that while he appreciated ‘the obvious difficulties’ when it comes
‘We need a clear and coherent plan’
to childcare and public health measures, ‘many healthcare staff are still left in the lurch without childcare, which also means less essential workers on the frontline’.
He added: ‘That is why we need a clear and coherent plan for the reopening of the childcare sector as a whole that takes all these issues into account; the Government needs to show a real sense of urgency on this.’
The coronavirus death toll rose to 1,543 after ten more deaths were announced yesterday. There were 64 new cases of the disease confirmed, the lowest since mid-March.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases stands at 24,112.
Today’s first step out of lockdown is a crucial moment in the fight against coronavirus, Health Minister Simon Harris said yesterday, warning that the country remained in the danger zone. Mr Harris said Ireland would end up in a ‘bad place’ if people did not proceed with caution and tried to move ahead of what the eased restrictions allowed.
‘We have all come too far and sacrificed too much to screw it up,’ he said.
Some retail outlets will open today and sports like golf and tennis will resume. People can meet in groups of four outside if they obey social distancing.
HSE figures have shown the virus’s prevalence continued on a downward trajectory.
There were 54 Covid-19 patients in ICUs yesterday, down by 67% from the peak in mid-April, when around 160 people were receiving intensive care treatment.
The overall coronavirus hospital admission rate is
down 66% from the peak. Around 4,000 tests are currently being completed every day. Of those, around 98% are testing negative. The 2% positivity rate is down from 25% in mid-April.
New test and tracing targets will be in operation as the lockdown starts to ease. Ireland will also have the capacity to test 100,000 people per week from next week, the health authorities said.
One new target is a three-day timeframe from the point of test referral to the completion of contact tracing, in 90% of positive cases. The other is a two-day turnaround from the point of the test swab being taken to the notification of the result.
That means, of all people tested who return a negative result – currently 98% – they will be informed of that outcome within 48 hours.
Automation of the notification process is being introduced to speed up the timelines.
HSE CEO Paul Reid also asked people to continue to comply with
Non-Covid patients to get treatment
the revised regulations. ‘I would urge everybody that we can’t undo everything that we have achieved together over the last few weeks,’ he said. ‘So we all still have a collective duty of care to continue to protect our loved ones and to continue to protect our healthcare workers, particularly as we head into next week.’
Yesterday, Mr Reid outlined plans to gradually reintroduce other healthcare services that had been halted or scaled back due to the coronavirus emergency. But he said that would not be straightforward and would come with risks.
‘People do want a level of predictability but we now have to deliver non-Covid services in a very unpredictable world, in a very unpredictable environment,’ he said.
‘Many people all across the health service are used to balancing risks every day as we have provided health services for many years.’