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Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said that he and the acting medical director are “cautiously optimistic” about how Dublin is doing with the level 3 restrictions, but “it is still too early.”
He said they needed the seven-day rate of the virus, less than half the 14-day rate.
Currently, the 14-day rate is 147 cases per 100,000 population and the seven-day rate is 78 per 100,000.
“We want to see that seven-day rate less than half the 14-day rate.”
Dublin is on the 10th day of three weeks of Level 3 restrictions that the government had warned could be extended if the spread of the virus could not be contained.
However, he said there were no plans for any emergency meetings of the National Public Health Emergencies Team (NPHET) ahead of their weekly meeting on Thursday.
But they were looking closely at four other counties: Cork, Galway, Louth and their own constituency of Wicklow.
And he said that northeast Kildare has a rate of 330 cases per 100,000, which is about four times the national average. Demonstrated in the publicly available data center for Covid-19, the map of each electoral area, showing where the virus is spreading.
Donnelly said on RTÉ’s This Week show that they needed the virus’s reproduction rate, or R, the rate at which those infected transmit it to others, to be below one.
The rate is currently between 1.5 and 1.6, he said.
The minister said that “we have 110 hospitalized people and 18 people in intensive care”, with coronavirus.
He stressed that the state will continue to do all it can, but said the most powerful message was that of the CMO to “think of all the people you plan to meet this week and cut that number in half.”
When asked about the government’s effectiveness in getting its message across about house parties and other private gatherings, Donnelly said the “vast majority” of people adhere to the regulations.
He said there were incidents of house parties and gatherings that exceeded the rules, but “not the norm,” but stood out because it was available for everyone to see on social media.
“The evidence we have is that the vast majority of people are doing the right thing.”
He said Kildare, Laois and Offaly showed that “when we move early” it goes ahead.
Donnelly said they were very concerned about the number of beds with some hospitals already almost full. He said that was why they had introduced the winter plan two months earlier with the provision of nearly 600 additional emergency beds and additional investment in community supports to keep people at home.
He added that the HSE is negotiating with each private hospital one by one for services. They are looking for “rapid response capacity” and additional capacity to treat public patients in private hospitals.
Former infectious disease consultant Professor Sam McConkey said government restrictions on movement might not be necessary if people voluntarily change their behavior to combat the spread of Covid-19, “I think if people in Cork, where is increasing, he will change his socialization voluntarily for two or four weeks “then” you would not need legislation and strict and harsh restrictions “.
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