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Nobody thought it would be that bad. If we had known then what we know now. There was a great demand to reopen the country. People had been locked up in November. If you had canceled Christmas, it would have been too difficult after last year.
These are some of the comments now being heard as the state faces a hospital emergency after the government’s relaxation of Christmas coronavirus restrictions pushed Ireland from having one of the lowest infection rates in Europe to the highest. the world in just six traumatic weeks.
During three weeks of increasing contacts, the chart shot upward, almost vertically, a trajectory that had not been seen during the previous two waves. The state took nine months to approve 80,000 cases. It took three more weeks to reach 160,000.
There are twice as many people hospitalized as those who entered the first wave. Hospital ICUs are treating more serious coronavirus cases. Non-coronavirus care has been affected, while outbreaks are increasing in nursing homes and residential care.
“What happened in December was we invited the tiger for tea, and the tiger ate us,” said Tomás Ryan, associate professor at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin. It was a gamble.
‘Meaningful’ Christmas
“We really took the idea of balancing the virus and the economy to the extreme. It does not work. It is like Solomon and separates the baby. You can’t do it, ”said Professor Ryan, who suggested in early November that“ Christmas ”meetings should be delayed for a month.
He wasn’t just worried. The government went against the advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) that warned that the state could have hospitality, or family reunions, but not both.
In the hope of a “meaningful” Christmas, the Government rejected the data analysis of EY consultants hired by the Department of the Taoiseach, who showed that greater socialization led to more infections during the fall.
In a Nov. 26 letter to the government, before the holiday relaxations were announced, Nphet recommended that home visits from another home be allowed for up to six visitors and up to six visitors from three other homes during the holidays.
Nphet emphasized, in bold in his letter, that if restaurants and pubs serving food were to reopen, then the recommended domestic mix for the two weeks “could not take place either.” The State was in a “very precarious position,” he warned.
The next day, the government announced that it would allow households to mingle with up to two other households from December 18, but would reopen hospitality before that, from December 4, allowing six people to dine inside. restaurants or gastropubs.
Three days later, Taoiseach Micheál Martin explained his decision to The Irish Times: “There are limits to which a government can lock up people for an extended period of time, to be crude about it, and we have to strike the right balance. It’s about balance. “
The average number of close contacts of coronavirus cases peaked at just over five over Christmas. Looking back, Kingston Mills, professor of experimental immunology at Trinity College, says the government made a mistake.
“I said it at the time that we would inevitably have a resurgence of a significant number of cases if they opened up the hospitality industry and allowed people to socialize more than they had been.
“Everyone thought that was going to happen, including the government,” he said, “there was no surprise. If there was a surprise, it was the numbers, which rose so high. Everyone expected to see a rebound in late December and early January. “
The infection rates were high even before the relaxations came. Dr Breda Smyth, director of public health for HSE West, which covers Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, said local rates “really aren’t anywhere near” where they should have been to withstand a Christmas surge.
Since then, Dr. Smyth has detected infections at Christmas parties and family gatherings. Large groups bypassed the six-person rule by reserving multiple tables. In some cases, everyone returned home later.
The UK’s newer and more infectious strain of virus had not been seeded enough here to get off the ground, accounting for only a small portion of Christmas infections. Data presented at Nphet briefings suggests that between 75% and 92.5% of December infections were the strain outside the UK.
Alcohol creates “the perfect breeding ground for infection,” said Dr. Smyth, “it was socialization, socializing with alcohol in close quarters that has really driven transmission.”
Traveling also helped. More than 54,000 people traveled to the state between December 21 and January 3. Of the UK passengers who tested positive, 50 per cent had the UK variant, helping to seed the post-Christmas cases.
Perfect storm
“It was almost like a perfect storm. There was an increase in socialization, more than expected, after six weeks of confinement that was difficult for people, so there was a repressed demand, ”said a source, who did not want to be identified.
Four days before Christmas, when a third wave was declared, Medical Director Tony Holohan advised people to stay home and stop socializing. The next day, the government brought forward the planned closure of the hospitality industry, but allowed households to mix, albeit on a decreasing scale.
The intergenerational mixing during Christmas led to the transmission of the virus to older and more vulnerable people, Dr. Smyth said. The increase in cases since then has been “devastating”, an “absolutely heartbreaking disappointment.”
Nphet member Dr Smyth said she fully supported the group’s recommendations in the November 26 letter, which was “the vision of what is likely to happen.”
“It happened, unfortunately,” he said.
Looking back, Professor Ryan, a member of the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group that supports a “Covid zero” strategy, argues that the government failed to guide the public in making difficult decisions about “how we as a society live under the pandemic.”
“We have a government that seeks softened measures. The best middle ground they think they can find is between Nphet, on the one hand, providing them with short-term public health advice and lobbyists, on the other, providing them with short-term applications, ”he said.
However, ICU doctor Catherine Motherway at Limerick University Hospital, which on Thursday had the highest number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in the state, said many people “just forgot there was a pandemic” over Christmas.
Everyone will have to learn lessons: “We cannot socialize without being immune. While we wait for the population to gain immunity, hopefully through vaccination and not the disease, we must all be very careful, regardless of what the Government decides, “he said.
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