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In recent days, a large amount of new information about Covid-19 has entered the public domain.
In addition to a comprehensive 36-page letter from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), the government also published an analysis from the consulting firm EY, the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Finance.
So what do we know now that we didn’t know before?
We entered this period “in the middle of the table in Europe in terms of disease incidence,” Nphet told the government in last week’s letter. However, due to restrictions, Ireland has radically outperformed the group, avoiding the nightmare scenario of 2,600 cases and 40 deaths per day that had been predicted for early November.
This is unambiguous good news, but it is not out of the question. It is clear, for example, that Level 5 did not have the desired effect.
This is not to say that it did not work at all, it did, in combination with the ban on home visits. Nphet and the EY report attribute the decline in the level of disease to a combination of the two. But it has not worked as well as expected.
R number
The hope was that the all-important R number, which measures the rate of infection, could be brought to 0.5 for much of the lockdown period. That has not happened, and is currently estimated at between 0.7 and 1.0.
Nphet now believes that level 5 will reduce R to between 0.6 and 0.9. The hope was to get cases below 100 a day, compared to 300 today, and that can still happen, but it is unlikely that they will remain suppressed for long.
Nphet argues that if socialization and mixing occurs in the home, “a third wave of disease will occur much more quickly and with higher mortality than the second.”
This means that, having fired our most powerful weapon for as long as the economy tolerates it, we have not been able to suppress the disease at the levels seen during the summer.
Other data may prompt a reassessment of the scope and impact of the restrictions. The Finance Department presentation shows that the impact on Ireland’s gross domestic product has been roughly the same as other countries that have had less restrictive lockdowns, raising the question of whether we over-correct, strictly economic. Meanwhile, CSO analysis reveals the enormous cost of the lockdown on people’s mental health.
GAA celebrations
The EY report has plenty of caveats, but it suggests a spike after wet bars open and generally when people mingled in a variety of settings, from GAA championship celebrations to reopened colleges.
All of this should be included in the mix when deciding policy against a pandemic in the future. A key question is when the next set of measures should be decided.
Nphet’s letter says that transmission can be controlled with a three-week intervention when cases are approximately 400 per day, and urges early intervention. It suggests that even in a controlled scenario where R is at 1.2, that threshold will be reached next month. The model is based on a starting point of less than 100 cases per day. However, Nphet believes that R can go as high as 2.0 during Christmas.
The above model, released under Freedom of Information, shows that Nphet told the government that it might have to intervene in early January if the R number was 0.5 during the lockdown and if cases were around 100 per day when it was lifted.
Sunday’s number of 299 cases indicates that the journey to 100 may not be easy, or may not have been accomplished at all, before the cases start to grow again. The government will hope to have bought enough time before the next series of tough decisions, which may be more complex and tense than ever.
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