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The state’s public health team has not recommended a move to higher levels of restrictions, it has emerged.
Two high-level sources confirmed that the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) remains seriously concerned about the Covid-19 figures and have told the government that the situation must continue to be monitored.
But a change to a higher level of restrictions has not been recommended.
One source said there was “nothing too dramatic” about Thursday’s meeting and it will take another ten days at least to see if current restrictions are dampening the numbers.
A letter has been sent to the team’s government. This will be considered in a cabinet subcommittee on Friday along with plans to improve the implementation of Tier 3 measures.
New cases
The Health Department reported one additional Covid-19-related death and 506 more cases of the disease, including 91 in Dublin.
This brings the number of deaths from the disease in the state to 1,817 since the first death was recorded in March at the start of the pandemic.
Of the new cases, about 64 percent are under the age of 45, while 39 percent are associated with outbreaks or are close contacts of a confirmed case.
Fifty-nine cases, or 12%, were identified as community transmission.
There were 76 positive cases in Cork, 53 in Donegal, 42 in Meath, and the remaining 244 were spread across 21 counties.
The latest figures show that there were 159 confirmed Covid-19 patients in the hospital and 25 in intensive care units.
On Wednesday, there were 155 Covid-19 patients in the hospital and 27 in intensive care units, including 15 on ventilators.
This compares with 121 in the hospital and 22 in the ICU a week earlier, and 48 in the hospital and six in the ICU a month earlier.
Four cases have been reported, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 40,086 in Ireland.
Earlier Thursday, health and medical experts called for an escalation of national controls and restrictions to combat the growing spread of the coronavirus.
“My opinion is that we have to take tighter restrictions, what we have been doing in Dublin for the last three weeks and in the rest of the country for the last days has not been adequate to keep the rise of the coronavirus in Ireland under control. control, ”said infectious disease consultant Professor Sam McConkey on Thursday morning. “So we need more measures of some kind.”
The call comes after medical director Dr. Tony Holohan said on Wednesday that he is more concerned about how Covid-19 is spreading in the state now than when Nphet recommended to the government that the country move to level 5. of restrictions. Instead, the country was moved to level 3.
Speaking in his first media appearance since returning from an extended period of leave, and since the recommendation, he said: “In any case. . . the level of concern you had [on Sunday] it’s less than the level of concern I have now. “
He said: “All the main indicators of this disease have worsened; our concern is growing and faster.”
Speaking at the Newstalk breakfast on Thursday, Professor McConkey said the fact that the number of cases in Dublin was stabilizing was not necessarily a “good thing”.
“Things like admissions and the number of outbreaks are increasing. I think we are seeing some impact, a kind of definite tipping point compared to a few weeks ago, ”he said. “The Dublin numbers have stabilized, but being stabilized where we are, at Level 3 for a long time, like 6 months or a year or more, is not a solution.”
Professor McConkey said he was in favor of a stricter approach for a shorter period of time. “My view is that we would all be better off if we had two months of stricter restrictions, getting better control and reducing it,” he said.
When asked about the R number, the number of people to whom each person infected with the virus transmits it, Professor McConkey said: ‘The problem is that if Dublin’s R rate stays at 1, we could be in this for months or years, none of us want to be where we are now for months, years, that’s very unsatisfactory. “
R number
Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of the Irish Epidemiological Modeling Group, said on Wednesday that the R number, which must be below 1 to suppress the disease, is likely to be about 1.2.
However, he said he is flattered by Dublin’s performance. Professor Nolan said the number in the capital is probably around one, and in the rest of the country it is around 1.5.
If the R number remains at a level of 1.2 to 1.4, Nphet expects to see 1,100 to 1,500 cases per day by the end of the first week of November and 350 to 450 people in hospital by that date.
Professor McConkey said he largely agreed with those projections. He also said that there is a need for a joint policy on Covid-19 for Ireland and the UK.
Speaking about the rise in hospital admissions, he said that the idea that “we can protect the elderly and vulnerable from the coronavirus, sadly [is] is not true.”
Border
Meanwhile, Donegal GP Martin Coyne has said that Level 3 restrictions would work if people did what they are supposed to do. However, the open border with Northern Ireland was also a problem, he said on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne program.
In the same program, Tomás Ryan, associate professor of biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin, said that the government should have had contingency plans for each level when it announced the Plan for Living with Covid-19.
It would be appropriate now to move to Level 5 across the country and then restrictions could be lowered locally in counties where transmission levels were lower, he said.
A change in strategy is necessary, he said. The current government policy of “negotiating with public health officials” is not working. “The virus does not care about the five levels.”
Infectious disease consultant Paddy Mallon said that, as a society, behavior has changed since the first wave and “we have learned to protect the elderly and vulnerable.”
But, he said, the health system continued to see an increase in hospitalizations and ICU utilization. The situation is not overwhelming yet, but on the current trajectory, the situation will soon be untenable, he warned.
Too many people were doing things they didn’t need to do, he said. Drinking coffee at each other’s house, hosting book clubs, “small actions that contribute to the transmission between homes.”
“I do not envy anyone in Nphet or the government for having to make decisions,” he added.
“Every action requires community action, if it is not accepted, we will have a suboptimal response.”
Tough decisions will have to be made and they will have to be made quickly, he said. “We all need to work harder.”
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has warned that a brief lockdown may still occur despite the government this week rejecting Nphet’s advice to move to Level 5.
Sources present at a meeting of the Fine Gael parliamentary party on Tuesday night said Mr Varadkar warned that a circuit breaker lockout could be on the horizon.
“He basically said that locking a circuit breaker might or might not work, but he had no illusions that it is on the horizon,” said a source.
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