Simon Harris recalls difficult Covid decisions
One year on from the first case of Covid-19 being diagnosed in Ireland, SIMON HARRIS recalls the first months of battling the virus and the tough decisions that had to be made
WHEN Dr Tony Holohan called me that Saturday night, February 29, he opened with the words, ‘Minister, you know what I’m calling to tell you.’ And, of course, I did. I knew before I answered the phone. The dreaded but inevitable news had arrived: we had our first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Ireland.
So little was known about the virus still at that time. A month before, I had briefed Cabinet on the outbreak in Wuhan and the National Public Health Emergency Team was set up.
Experts came together to form an invaluable advisory group, mobilising with a speed and energy driven by commitment to public service. This was not the first NPHET but the existence of others was little known to the wider public. So much was to change.
In the intervening period, although it almost seems impossible to believe now, we had a general election. At that time, there were over 31,000 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases, and 638 deaths, with all bar one in China.
As Ireland continued in containment phase, hard work was going on behind the scenes to prepare our health service to be able to detect and respond to cases. Heroic efforts were under way to secure Personal Protective Equipment, ventilators and extra capacity for increased hospitalisations.
Then the 29th of February arrived and Ireland began to embark on this lifechanging course, nobody knowing just how long we would be on this hard road.
When Tony broke the news of our first case to the country, little did people know the reassuring and constant figure he would become in our daily routines.
Within days, the numbers multiplied and soon tough decisions were required.
It was another phone call from
Tony on March 11 that brought us
‘Life changed from that moment onwards’
to the next phase. He was chairing a late-night emergency meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team and it was clear big calls would have to be made.
The test results for that day had shown a significant spike in positive Covid tests and NPHET now had little option but to take drastic action.
It was a late Wednesday night and soon I was joined by the thentánaiste, Simon Coveney, my Secretary General Jim Breslin and HSE chief executive Paul Reid to await the outcome of NPHET’s deliberations.
None of us were surprised to be there but the surreal nature of the gathering dawned on us when we found ourselves relying on a box of Maltesers we had found and endless cups tea to get us through.
NPHET continued meeting until after midnight at which point Tony presented his recommendations to us. NPHET was calling for the closure of schools, colleges and childcare, and restrictions on people getting together. Everyone in the country was to be asked to work from home.
The view from the Department of Health stretches to both sides of the city. As the lights dimmed in the distance, I remember thinking of those tucking up for the evening blissfully unaware of the lifechanging decisions they would wake up to.
We left the Department in the early hours and a short time later we gathered in the Sycamore Room in Government Buildings as the then-taoiseach addressed the nation from Washington.
Life changed from that moment onwards. We had not witnessed anything like this. We were entering uncharted territory.
But we also knew we had no other option. We were being warned that tens of thousands of people could die and that cases in Ireland could reach 1.4 million.
Soon after that day we were asking the people for more – and then more again. Every week, we had to ask our citizens to go that little bit further.
Our days became filled with news of cases growing exponentially, people becoming very sick and families losing loved ones while being unable to come together to grieve, robbed of the uniquely Irish way we support each other through bereavement.
There was only one way we could respond as a nation as each night we saw an upward trend on the graph of new cases. We had to flatten that curve. People’s actions would decide the course of the virus and, while there was so much we could no longer do, we had to communicate the things we all could do to make a difference.
Our behaviour could slow the spread of Covid-19 and alter its course to stop people getting sick, to save them from death.
In the midst of that first wave, it was hard to even conceive or contemplate we would be enduring a second and third before the year was out and the toll that has been taken is great.
Although I know people are worn very thin, I do not buy into the idea that the meitheal which characterised our early response has dissipated.
I know that each day all over this country people are reaching out in the ways that they can to family, friends and neighbours so that we support each other and protect each other at the same time.
We’ve got to keep at this and I know that we will, and the great thing is we now have an incredible ally by our sides. Vaccines. Some really positive signs in recent days should give us hope that our combined efforts, along with the vaccine programmes, are generating that light at the end of the tunnel.
As we reflect on what we have gone through and look to the future, I was struck by the words of Mary Robinson in a recent radio interview. To my ears she summed up the lessons so far as: Collective human behaviour matters; government matters; science matters; and compassion matters.
We all want a return to a more normal life but I believe encompassed in that desire is a hunger for it to be a better normal – one where we all mind vulnerable people better, one where we don’t allow others suffer more due to inequality and one where we prepare our country to succeed in a changing world without leaving anyone behind.
After everything we have endured, and no matter how exhausted we are as we continue to endure it, I am in no doubt from all I have witnessed about our collective ability to build a better, fairer, more sustainable future.
But I also know there are people reading this today who have lost loved ones and have been unable to grieve properly. I know people who are lonely and tired. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs temporarily.
We have all missed birthdays, celebrations, weddings, christenings, nights out, nights in with family and friends, trips to the cinema, or a match, or breaks away.
I know there are a million and one of you who want nothing more than a conversation that does not include the word Covid.
There is so much hope on the horizon and we have every reason to start to think about planning for the future.
I hope we find time to consider all we have lost, and to mark it in a fitting way. Some trivialise that conversation but it is one we need to have. It can be the final chapter to this sorry affair.
When I reflect back on the anniversary of Ireland’s first case and all that followed, the Irish phrase I used at the announcement of the first lockdown last March rings ever truer: Ní neart go cur le chéile. It’s hard to keep holding firm after all this time but our collective strength will see us through.
‘There is so much hope on the horizon’