Pubs and shops could be closed for Christmas unless Ireland hits ‘impossible’ case number target

Holiday shopping could be canceled without a dramatic drop in the spread of Covid before December.

The apocalyptic perspective was delivered to an astonished group of up to a dozen business leaders by Tánaiste Leo Varadkar during a dramatic conference call last night.

It is said that he gave them “a dose of reality” that some did not expect.

Varadkar let them know that retail, restaurants and bars face continued restrictions in December if we don’t get the R number below 0.7, which industry sources at last night’s meeting said is “impossible.”

And the blinds could stay completely closed if the number doesn’t drop below 1.0.

The Minister of Business also laid the foundations for the blockade that will continue until January, although he was reluctant to call it.

The ‘strong’ messages were relayed by Mr. Varadkar in a group call late at night from 10:30 pm to 11:35 pm last night after his closing press conference ended.

Business leaders in attendance included representatives from the country’s two bar lobbies, hoteliers, the restaurant trade, Tom Parlon from CIF and union leader Patricia King from Congress.

Industry representatives left the call with no illusions that hospitality ended this year.

One participant told the Irish Mirror: “The mood coming out of the meeting was that hospitality is over for 2020, you just have to connect the dots.”

They said Mr Varadkar was “honest” in his assessment, as he acknowledged that it would be “very difficult” for the hospitality sector, in particular, to operate with 15 clients “in the cold” during winter.

Another said that retail representatives were particularly surprised when told that they, too, could not reopen unless the numbers fell.

The lobbyist said retailers were “gloomy” when told what it was like, while hospitality people “felt it coming.”

The R number currently hovers around 1.8 in many areas.

The news comes after NPHET professor Philip Nolan said that Ireland can have fewer than 200 cases a day in early December if everyone does their part.

He said that Ireland’s Reproductive Rate (R), which currently stands at around 1.4 nationally, needs to drop to 0.5 to see an efficient drop.

Nolan said hitting a rate of 0.7-0.9 “won’t be enough” as the numbers would only drop temporarily.

In a series of tweets last night, he explained: “The move to Level 5 restrictions was a difficult decision for the Government, and it is very difficult for the people whose lives and livelihoods are most affected, but growth needed to be interrupted. Uncontrolled exponential of the pandemic.

“We can, collectively, suppress the transmission of the virus again, if we are fully in the spirit of these measures, and eliminate, over the next six weeks, close contacts other than our home, ‘bubble’, school or university, or essential elements job.

“Our model shows that for this to be successful, we need to reduce viral transmission to very low levels. A reproduction number of 0.9 or 0.7 will not be enough, we must aim for R = 0.5.

“And we have to keep R close to 0.5 for 6 weeks. If we kept R at 0.5 for 3 weeks, the cases would go down to about 400 per day, but they would go back up to about 1000 per day four weeks later. R at 0.5 for six weeks, cases remain below 200 per day until the end of December. “