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The director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, Cillian de Gascun, has said that there is an expectation that at some point during the next week coronavirus cases will stabilize.
Speaking on RTÉ Saturday with Katie Hannon, she also said that the number of close contacts is decreasing and that people are realizing how “precarious” the situation is right now.
However, he warned that “with all certainty” there are more cases of the virus in the community than the daily figures, since the contacts of the confirmed cases are not being analyzed.
He said the Level 5 measures that are implemented will work, but people need to be more vigilant because new strains of the virus are more transmissible.
“The UK variant concerns us more simply about the amount of virus on the island, because we know it is being transmitted in the community.”
With the variant detected in South Africa, he said that they know where the three cases are and that they have been contained and controlled and he understands that there was no forward transmission.
He said they need more data to verify how effective the Covid-19 vaccine is against the South African variant.
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New figures show that the number of people with Covid-19 in the hospital is now four times higher than it was fifteen days ago.
Meanwhile, the professor of experimental immunology at Trinity College Dublin Kingston Mills said he believes that those who have been infected with Covid-19 and have recovered “do not need to be vaccinated” as the chances of reinfection are low and would mean saving doses. of vaccine for others. .
Speaking on RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor show, he said he’s basing this on the findings of a recent medical study conducted in the UK.
“There was an article published last week by a group in Oxford that looked at healthcare workers who had previously been infected or had not been infected and followed them for seven months.
“And they found that only two people who had been previously infected were reinfected. Those two only had asymptomatic infections. While those who had not been infected previously, there were several thousand, a significant number of them were infected for the first time.”
He said the bottom line from this study is that if you get infected, “you have a very low chance of getting re-infected, at least for seven months.”
“So why vaccinate someone who is already protected?”
He said that while there are around 135,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases in Ireland, he believes there are probably twice as many as the contacts for the cases are not currently being tested.
He believes there are probably a quarter of a million people here who have been infected and in a month he anticipates that number could be half a million.
“So if we use two doses, that’s a million doses of vaccine that could be saved by not vaccinating those who have recovered from the infection.”
He said that he knows he will get some opposition to this theory that those who recover from Covid-19 are unlikely to be reinfected.
His comments come amid ongoing concerns about the vaccine supply and launch here.
Professor Mills also spoke about the threat of the UK and South African variants, describing them as “worrisome” and that transmission can be a problem among children.
However, on a more optimistic note he said that “it appears at this stage that the vaccine will work against him.”
He also said that Ireland’s measures to restrict the importation of the virus must be much stricter.
He believes that a negative Covid-19 test result, which is now required for travelers arriving in Ireland from the UK and South Africa, should have been made mandatory months ago from everywhere.
“That is what will keep the virus out.”
He said it is too late for the UK variant, but the South African, where mutations are more critical, could make the vaccine less effective, so “we want to keep that variant under control.”
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