Control rests with Nphet until trust is restored

THERE are two key takeaways from the Government’s new plan for ‘managing’ rather than ‘living’ with the coronavirus. The first is the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) has resumed control of the country’s Covid-19 strategy.

The second is the Government no longer trusts the public to fully comply with coronavirus restrictions.

Depending on your point of view, you will be either delighted or disillusioned to hear Nphet is back in control. But after months of trying to find a way of standing up to public-health chiefs without being really seen to be doing so, the Government has ceded authority for now.

You won’t be seeing any outbursts from Tánaiste Leo Varadkar about recommendations in the coming weeks and there will be no attempts to gazump the public health advice with more social- or economicdriven proposals.

At the launch of the plan, Taoiseach Micheál Martin deferred questions on a noticeable number of occasions to deputy chief medical officer Ronan Glynn.

So all decisions from now on will be based on public health advice from Nphet and there will be little or no deviation.

“We can’t be seen to overrule Nphet after we did at Christmas and it led to 1,000 deaths,” a Cabinet minister said.

The Government feels burned by its decision to deviate from Nphet’s advice, even though the group did clear the way for the easing of some restriction and you could argue it would have resulted in a similar situation in January. Nphet also did not predict the devastation that was caused by the British variant. But it had been calling for quarantining of international passengers for more than six months and this would have caught some of the British strain.

Rightly or wrongly, the blame for the coronavirus carnage of the last two months rests squarely on the Government’s shoulders so it will nod along to Nphet for the foreseeable. This might change if public tensions fray further as we head into April.

The other aspect of the ‘Covid-19 Resilience and Recovery 2021 – The Path Ahead’ likely to infuriate the public is that it offers very little ‘Path Ahead’. All that is on offer beyond schools opening is the possibility that you might be able to meet someone outside in April. After that it’s anyone’s guess what will happen.

The reason they didn’t include an actual pathway is the belief that people are less compliant with Covid rules as dates for easing restrictions approach.

The plan says research shows a “complex balance between Covid-19 fatigue and resilience is emerging”.

“High ongoing levels of pandemic fatigue, could adversely affect continued population acceptance of and compliance with the nonpharmaceutical interventions.

“There is a further risk that vaccinated cohorts will be less likely to adhere to public health measures,” it adds.

So, unlike our neighbours in Britain who have been given a clear idea of when restrictions will ease, we will have to be on our best behaviour or else we won’t be told what the Government’s plan is for returning the country back to some form of normality.