‘Baby steps’ to be taken from here

FERMOY PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERT SAYS COVID-19 HAS BEEN HANDLED WELL

THE policy of the Government to follow the advice of public health experts ‘almost 100%’ was unprecedented and contributed hugely to the successful handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.

So said Dr Joe Barry, a retired Public Health expert from TCD who hails from Fermoy, as he said the country would be able to quickly suppress any future outbreaks of the illness due to the preparations made in the two and a half months since restrictions were introduced.

Dr Barry, who was head of Public Health in Trinity College, came out of retirement at the outset of the crisis and was working in the HSE to draw up documents on how to deal with the issues which emerged.

“There are two guiding principles in public health - the precautionary principle, which urges caution, and the principle of proportionality which measures the impact of each measure against the possible risk.”

According to Dr. Barry, the tensions which have emerged in recent weeks - the debate about two metres social distancing versus one metre was one example - would be questions of judgement for politicians more so than public health experts.

“Because of how we’ve handled this and the preparations we’ve made, we will be able to suppress future outbreaks more quickly.

“However, politicians will be balancing the precautionary approach in terms of public health and the proportionality issue and this will lead to pressure from interest groups but we will be taking ‘ baby steps’ forward from here on in,” Dr Barry predicted.