Keep contacts low or it could ‘ruin Christmas’ warns HSE boss
THE nation will see 1,200 cases of coronavirus a day unless we ensure we do not increase our contacts, NPHET has warned.
Health experts have also urged caution about dining out from today as it may lead to ‘further transmission and put us in a precarious situation’.
This comes as HSE boss Paul Reid said that meeting up with our friends between now and December 18 has the potential to ‘ruin Christmas’. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee also warned that a surge in cases could potentially delay further easing of restrictions.
Yesterday’s health briefing heard that the HSE is braced for a significant rise in the reproductive or ‘R’ rate of the virus unless people keep discretionary meetings to a minimum. Professor Philip Nolan said increases in the R number to 2 could produce between 800 and 1,200 cases a day by mid- January.
Currently, the R number is between 0.8 and 1. ‘It’s reasonable to be concerned about the level of social mixing over the Christmas period,’ he said. ‘If we don’t limit our number of contacts, it will significantly accelerate the spread of the virus through the core festive period and leaves us in very rapid exponential growth in early January.’
Prof. Nolan added that the country now approaches Christmas with a higher rate of infection than expected. ‘It’s 3-4 times greater than we would have liked. That brings me to the fundamental point that we really do advise extreme caution over contacts per week.’
The NUI Maynooth professor added that the social mixing which took place in August and September gave an R number of 1.4, but anything higher would see a faster acceleration of this disease.
He spoke as six further deaths and 183 new cases of the virus were reported. However, the number of cases is believed to be around 100 cases lower, due to a technical issue with the automated system which transfers figures from laboratories to surveillance systems.
HSE CEO Mr Reid said that hugging people is an ‘extreme risk’ in the coming weeks. Speaking yesterday during the HSE briefing, he said there will be three phases of risk the country and the health service will be facing: this weekend as restaurants and gastropubs open, the second comes up until December 18 when household visitor restrictions are eased, and the final phase goes through Christmas on to the new year.
‘The risk for us over this weekend is that we begin to see an increase in cases in the coming week or two,’ Mr Reid said.
He said, during the second phase, there will be more people meeting which increases the risk of individuals contracting the virus. ‘It is a period where somebody can become infected or indeed can become a close contact of somebody, and then you are into the phase for Christmas, probably Christmas Day, of having to be in isolation, or restricted movements. That can ruin many people’s Christmases indeed ruin many families’ Christmas.’
He urged people to be careful as they meet up with people in restaurants in the coming weeks. ‘We are encouraging everybody as you do meet up, keep your heightened level of guard at all stages.’[
Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan also warned that if large numbers of people over the next three weeks adopted ‘discretionary’ socialising it could leave the health system in a ‘precarious’ situation. ‘He said: ‘If over the course of three weeks or so we engage with a lot of social activity, such as going to restaurants, that’s going to lead to further transmission and put us i n a precarious situation.’
0.8
The reproductive rate is now between 0.8 and 1