BRIGHTER DAYS AHEAD

One year on, NPHET gives injection of hope at last

‘BRIGHTER days are ahead’ as Ireland prepares to mark one year since the first confirmed Covid-19 case here, the acting head of NPHET Dr Ronan Glynn has promised.

With ‘three very effective vaccines’ and ‘hopefully’ three more on the way, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Glynn urged people to stick with the guidelines, saying there is good news on the horizon.

He said that there will be ‘a much higher level of clarity’ around the easing of restrictions by the end of March if everyone continues to adhere to Covid rules.

A further 29 people infected with coronavirus have died and another 776 cases were confirmed yesterday.

Speaking on RTÉ News last night, Dr Glynn admitted that most people believed the pandemic would be a ‘two- or three-month issue’.

While he acknowledged the last year has been ‘extremely difficult’, he vowed the emergence of vaccines should bring drastic improvements. ‘I don’t think any of us foresaw, or wanted to foresee, the year that has been this time last year,’ Dr Glynn said. ‘We’ve seen incredible progress over the past number of weeks.’

He added: ‘There are brighter days ahead. We know so much more now than we did this time last year. We’ve got three vaccines that we’re rolling out across the country.

‘If we can get the numbers down by the end of March, we’ll be able to give people a much higher level of certainty about what lies ahead.’

His comments come as the country prepares to mark one year since the first Covid-19 case was discovered here on February 29, 2020.

New figures released by the Central Statistics Office to mark the first anniversary of Covid-19 arriving here have revealed that, proportionally, Dublin, Donegal, Limerick, Louth and Monaghan have recorded the highest number of cases to date.

Surprisingly, nearly half (45%) of people surveyed by the CSO in November 2020 reported that something in their lives has changed for the better since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. But almost six in ten people polled as part of the February 2021 Social Impact Of Covid-19 survey believe that the pandemic has impacted negatively on their mental health. Meanwhile, CSO data shows case numbers fell by 20% last week.

Case numbers fell by 20% last week