Council to step up Covid response once again
ADDRESSING the members at the start of last week’s monthly meeting of Wexford County Council, Fine Gael councillor John Hegarty called for the council to take more action amid the highest Covid numbers we had seen since the start of the pandemic.
With all of the members hunkered down in front of iPads and laptops for yet another virtual meeting, Cllr Hegarty felt that the time was upon them once again to lead by example as hundreds of new cases of the virus were being diagnosed each day.
‘I feel that the current situation needs addressing,’ Cllr Hegarty said. ‘The numbers in this county are shocking at the moment. I don’t want to be scaremongering or saying it’s out of control, but it’s very, very concerning, in particular the numbers we’re seeing in the New Ross District. I’ve been talking to people up in Wexford General Hospital, as I’m sure other members have, and things are getting very serious there. I’m just wondering, is our response adequate? Do we know what we want to say and what we want to communicate to people on this? Our response needs to be strong and a message needs to go out.’
Cllr Hegarty stressed that the ‘vast majority’ of people seemed to be doing all they could, but a ‘minority is just not getting the message’. He also stressed the importance of ensuring that those remaining businesses left open were fully aware of their responsibilities in relation to hand sanitiser etc.
Chief Executive of Wexford County Council Tom Enright said that a meeting was planned with the HSE for later in the week, where communications would certainly be a hot button topic. Mr Enright noted that ‘the numbers in Wexford are exceptionally high and looking at the age groups, it’s younger people who are contracting the virus. They are not the ones who necessarily have to worry about it, but they may pass it on to someone who is elderly or vulnerable.’
Cllr Hegarty also urged the members to reconvene the weekly Covid task force meetings, which took place during the first lockdown, something Chairman Ger Carthy said he was open to doing and quite a few of the members were open to.
Cllr Jim Codd said that the Covid issue ‘overshadows all else’ and stressed a need to ‘get tough on people wandering around while waiting on the results of Covid tests’.
Cllr Lisa McDonald said that task force meetings needed to be reconvened immediately and said that if the council needs to look at closing car-parks at public amenities etc again, then so be it. This was something that was also to be examined further.
Cllr Cathal Byrne sought to publicly re-iterate the message that if people have been for a Covid test, they have to isolate until they get the results. ‘The message is, until you’re negative, assume you’re positive,’ he said.
It was agreed that the council would step up its efforts in terms of tackling the Covid spike being seen by the county and the details were to be ironed out between the Chairman and the County Secretary.