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The interim marketing director has said contact trackers should start asking people who test positive for Covid-19 and who are believed to be community transmission cases about their visits to bars or restaurants in the previous period. to your positive result.
Following the recent recommendation by the National Public Health Emergencies Team (NPHET) that Dublin bars and restaurants stop serving customers indoors, officials were asked to provide concrete evidence that the transmission had been linked with these environments.
At the Oireachtas Covid-19 committee today, microbiologist professor Kirsten Schaffer said she was concerned that information on the origin of the cases was not available.
“I called Public Health Ireland yesterday to find out more and find out what the situation is at the moment. Currently, when a person is diagnosed with Covid-19, Public Health Ireland will ask about the contacts they had in the previous 48 hours. It will not ask where the individual thinks they have acquired the infection.
“It doesn’t ask if they’ve been to a restaurant or attended a house party. She doesn’t have that information and neither do I.
However, it is critical that we start trying to collect such information so that we can display the data and use it to indicate the reasons why, for example, house parties with more than ten attendees are prohibited and, if it happens, then Garda will be called and the house parties will be closed.
“We need some data to discuss, and it is not currently there. I know from Germany, because that data is collected there, that the increasing rates there are strongly associated with house parties and family gatherings, where people congregate and do not adhere to the rules of social distancing.
At the Health Department’s press conference tonight, Acting Medical Director Dr. Ronan Glynn said plans are now being put in place to ensure this type of questioning is included in the contact tracing system.
“This is a problem that many countries have faced and most countries would not retrospectively get in touch to track each case because it is a huge workload and it would significantly lengthen the process,” he said.
“But it must be done in at least a proportion of the cases, and plans are in place to do so.”
Dr. Glynn said this would be done in cases characterized as community transmission, where there is no obvious link to another case. Currently, one in four cases is identified as community transmission.
He said there is clear evidence that certain environments are at higher risk, such as poorly ventilated, indoor areas, as well as environments where people gather indoors for an extended period of time.
“And let’s be honest when people hang out, drink alcohol and let their guard down, that increases the risk,” he said.
“We have a situation tonight where we have almost 100 people in the hospital, 16 in intensive care units. Our doctors and nurses across the country are very concerned about the potential impact this will have on the provision of non-Covid healthcare.
“The last thing we want to see is this impact our cancer services again and all the other services that must continue on a daily basis.
“We have to make decisions. In that context we have to protect our priorities and at this time, unfortunately, certain elements of our social life are less important than others and we have to be honest with people about it. “
Tonight, Dr. Una Fallon, HSE Midlands director of public health, gave a series of examples that she and her colleagues had come across as part of their work on complex contact tracing cases, many of which were involved.
In one case, a factory worker with mild symptoms asked a friend to take him to a sporting event. In this event there were “many close contacts” and this resulted in two more cases: the friend who took him and another.
Of those two cases, there were 19 more cases, mainly related to work and of those 19 cases, five more.
Dr. Fallon said there were other outbreaks related to family events like funerals or communions.
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“People can adhere to the guide for service, but where afterwards there may be a multi-table meal, even though there are six at a table, there would be an association between the tables and the combination.”
In another case, a brother of a confirmed case went to a house party when he should have been restricting his movements and Dr. Fallon said the “end point of that was more than 20 new cases.”
“The message is just because you know the people and you’re out with them doesn’t mean you should let your guard down.”
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