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NPHET member Cillian De Gascun has said that it is too early to tell if Ireland will be at Level Two by Christmas.
The chairman of the Coronavirus Expert Advisory Group said that while the first signs are good, they hope to reduce the virus to double digits in terms of cases per day.
Speaking on RTE Radio One, Dr. De Gascun said: “Right now we don’t know what level we’re going to be at for Christmas, we still have six / seven weeks left, so we’re trying to predict where we’ll be (it’s difficult).
“The key message that people need to keep in mind is that people have done very well over the last two weeks, the number of cases is down, the incidence is dropping, the R rate is below 1, that is a very good sign.
“The problem is that we still have hundreds of cases a day, we still have more than 300 people in the hospital, we still have about 40 people in intensive care.
“To really suppress the virus, we need to get numbers below 100 and preferably low double digits.
“If we look back at May, June, July, we had a good summer from a coronavirus perspective.
“If we look at August, September, October, we didn’t do very well in that environment (indoors).”
The doctor added that when the confinement is over, they hope not to repeat what happened in those months.
The doctor said: “When we get out of these six weeks we don’t want to be doing what we did in August and September because that didn’t work.
“So from NPHET’s perspective, over the next few weeks … we’re looking at how we can improve in December and January.”
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