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Medical director Tony Holohan has written to the Minister of Health saying Level 5 restrictions will be needed to control the spread of Covid-19 after Christmas, it has been discovered.
It is understood that Dr. Holohan wrote to Stephen Donnelly on Monday afternoon. Sources said that in the letter, Dr. Holohan told the Minister that Level 5 would be needed to control the virus in the coming weeks.
It is understood that the letter is not an official letter from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), but is written by Dr. Holohan in his capacity as president.
He said the measures set out in Level 5 would be necessary after Christmas, but did not give a specific date when they should be introduced.
It is also understood that Dr. Holohan’s letter raises concerns about advice given to persons who are household contacts of those identified as close contacts of a confirmed case. Under the guidance of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), these household or “secondary” contacts should restrict their movements until close contact obtains a clear test result. However, Dr. Holohan raised concerns that this is not being implemented by HSE, the sources said, raising concerns that it may be of particular concern due to the high levels of anticipated mixing during Christmas.
Nphet will meet to discuss the worsening situation on Wednesday.
Team members briefed the cabinet subcommittee on Covid-19 Monday night, along with senior officials, HSE CEO Paul Reid and the CSO, sharing models that suggested cases could be between 1,300 and 1,800 per day. at the beginning of January. It is understood that Mr. Reid told the meeting that hospitals are coping, but that the HSE remains concerned that any increase in cases will likely have an impact on hospital capacity in January.
The recommendation will come to Cabinet on Tuesday that the hospitality should close on Christmas Eve, sometime in the middle of the afternoon. The advice will be that this measure applies to companies such as hairdressers and manicurists, as well as cinemas and galleries.
Non-essential retail must remain open, with strict guidelines on the numbers allowed in the store and secure waiting protocols. Additional support for the affected companies will be recommended to the Cabinet.
However, the subcommittee did not reach a decision on recommendations for inter-county travel and home visiting, which will be discussed in Cabinet on Tuesday. A government source said that what would be recommended would be closer to Level 5 than Level 3, and that the seriousness of the situation was recognized.
On Monday, another 727 Covid-19 cases were reported in the state. No new deaths of coronavirus patients were reported. This leaves the total number of deaths in the pandemic at 2,158.
Dr Holohan told the Nphet conference that people should stay home and stop socializing due to the rapidly deteriorating situation with Covid-19.
This is not the time to go to restaurants and pubs, he said.
With public health officials saying we are firmly in the midst of a third wave of the pandemic, Dr. Holohan said it was important for people to review their plans for socializing before Christmas and to reconsider meeting with family members who may have more than 65 years or with doctors. conditions that make them vulnerable.
“It is important to make safe decisions to protect yourself and the people you love,” he said.
Dr. Holohan said in a statement that “our current disease trends are very concerning.”
Nphet did not report new deaths of Covid-19 patients on Monday. This leaves the total number of deaths in the pandemic at 2,158.
Nphet also reported 727 confirmed cases of the disease, bringing the total number of cases in the Republic to 80,267.
Of Monday’s 727 cases, 311 occurred in Dublin, 51 in Kilkenny, 48 in Wexford, 44 in Donegal, 44 in Cork, and the remaining 229 cases were spread across 19 other counties.
We are now clearly in a third wave of the pandemic, with a rapidly increasing number of cases, according to Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of Nphet’s epidemiological modeling advisory group.
There were 3,373 cases in the week through Saturday, 71 percent more than the previous week. The 14-day incidence of the disease is increasing at the fastest rate seen since last March, he said.
The number of cases is increasing just as fast in Dublin and in the rest of the country, with more than double the daily rate in the capital in the space of a week.
Professor Nolan said the situation in Dublin was “as bad as the October peak” of the virus.
He expressed great concern that older people “catch him early” in relation to the virus in this wave, as opposed to the second wave when they were protected in the early stages.
The growth rate of cases is now 5% daily, compared to 5-7% in October, and is increasing day by day.
The doubling time for cases is 10-14 days “and probably less.”
Meanwhile, the breeding number, a measure of how many other people a case infects, “could be as high as 1.5-1.6.”
Professor Nolan said the numbers in the hospital “may be starting to increase”, while the ICU numbers “are not decreasing yet.”
It predicted as many as 1,800 cases a day by Jan.6 if the cases grow 7 percent a day.
When asked about the new virus variant identified in the UK, Dr Cillian de Gascun, director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, repeated that it had not been identified here, based on genetic sequencing done to date.
Although analysis from the UK indicates that the new variant could be up to 70 percent more transmissible than other variants, Dr de Gascun said evidence for this has yet to be seen and laboratory studies have not yet been completed. .
However, he added that there was “enough to care” about the variant, with more mutations than would have been expected.
Based on the rate of spread that they have seen in the UK. . . I think it is prudent for our and European governments to operate according to the precautionary principle until we have more information. “
Professor Nolan said that the increase in cases in Ireland could be explained by more socialization since September without resorting to questions related to the new variant.
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