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Ireland is in a “delicate and fragile position” regarding the level of coronavirus in circulation and people should “carefully consider the risks” of socializing during Christmas.
According to the chairman of the Nphet modeling advisory group, Professor Philip Nolan, who said that the country also remained vulnerable due to the large number of people in intensive care and “as the Taoiseach has said, every contact counts now and during next weeks”.
Professor Nolan warned against people who think they are safe if they have a negative coronavirus test, particularly those who have come home for Christmas.
He said the risk of a false negative test result was “too high”, and for friends and family it was “a really dangerous position.”
Professor Nolan said that Nphet was asking people to do two things: “Think about how many contacts you really need to have to have a meaningful Christmas and limit that to the lowest number possible, particularly now.
“If we restrict our contacts now for the next 10 to 14 days, it will really significantly reduce the risk of a contact during the central Christmas period leading to infection.”
Second, he said people need to “think about the risks of any given contact, think about the risks of that contact, and do everything possible to reduce the risk.”
When asked about advice people have been given about mixing with three households, he said Saturday with Katie Hannon on RTÉ Radio 1 that the advice was that “there should be no more than three households involved in any event.”
But he said that “we really want to be more conservative than that. Limit your circle to the smallest circle you can. Find them outdoors if you can. If you come across them indoors, keep the number to a minimum. ”
He said people should also “limit the duration” of such contacts. “I mean, let’s not meet for endless hours and hours, at Christmas, longer visits have greater risks. He also said that people should remember to wear masks as much as possible and that windows should be “open a little” for ventilation.
He said the measures were aimed at “giving the vulnerable the gift of life at Christmas.”
“We can see the finish line here. In the spring and summer, the vulnerable in our society will be protected by the vaccine. We appeal to the people, for the remaining months until we have meaningful protection from vaccination, this is the time to postpone some things for beyond Christmas. “
He said that the impact of the opening from December 1 would begin to become evident in the coming days. He said his “fundamental message” was that we are “clearly in a higher risk position” than society in July.
He said the best scenario was that “we would see ourselves in January with the level of disease not much higher than we have now.”
Alternatively, he said: “We could very quickly go back to where we were in mid-October with over 1,000 cases per day and we would be very concerned that many of those cases are older, due to intergenerational mixing over Christmas. “
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