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The state’s public health emergency team considered measures that would allow indoor dining to continue in Dublin, but decided instead to recommend restricting restaurants to outdoor and takeout services only.
The National Public Health Emergencies Team (NPHET) had examined the limited numbers at the tables, reduced capacity, and earlier closing times.
In a Sept. 17 letter to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, Dr. Ronan Glynn, the state’s acting medical director, said that NPHET decided instead to recommend a ban on eating indoors “given the seriousness of the epidemiological situation in Dublin.” .
The spread of the coronavirus in Dublin is currently at an “extremely critical juncture,” public health officials warned the Government, while setting out the reasons for imposing additional restrictions on the capital.
NPHET expressed concern about the “growing risk” that the increase in Covid-19 cases in Dublin will drive large increases in other parts of the country, “given the size of its population and connectivity to other parts of the country.”
On Friday, the government placed Dublin on Level 3 of its Living with Covid-19 plan, with strict limits on gatherings, social activities and a ban on movement in and out of the county.
Dr Glynn said that NPHET’s view was that “the disease profile in Dublin is at an extremely critical juncture” and that the window of opportunity to suppress the virus “without significant additional measures is no longer available.”
“Once again, NPHET fully appreciates that this latest advice will be disappointing, disturbing and challenging for the people of Dublin in particular,” he wrote.
Public health officials were “extremely aware” of the effects of banning visits to nursing homes and other residential care facilities, he said. It was critical that there were “clear communications” that visits could still take place in compassionate circumstances, she said.
Previously, when community transmission became widespread in April and May, Covid-19 outbreaks had devastating impacts on nursing homes, accounting for more than half of all deaths.
“NPHET concluded that the situation has further deteriorated in Dublin and there is now a very real risk of widespread transmission both in the county and in other areas of the country,” said Dr. Glynn.
The letter to Mr. Donnelly, sent after an NPHET meeting, noted that there were 73 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the hospital, with nine admissions in the last 24 hours.
The number of hospitalizations and cases in intensive care “kept increasing at a rapid rate,” said Dr. Glynn.
“Even small increases in the number of admissions have the potential to put pressure on the hospital system and, if the current pattern of admissions were to continue, this would have an impact on health care delivery more broadly,” he said.
The senior Health Department official said that if the virus’s trajectory continued on its current path, there would be as many as 1,000 cases per day in four weeks, 60 percent of which would be in Dublin.
The new restrictions included a ban on travel in and out of Dublin, in addition to work, education and other essential purposes.
Dr Glynn’s letter noted that travel through the capital would be allowed “for the purpose of reaching a destination outside of Dublin”, and people could travel within or outside the county “for the purpose of returning home after the holidays”.
The additional measures for Dublin would only have a substantial effect on the spread of the disease “if there is widespread and sincere collective acceptance,” he warned.
NPHET did not recommend a return to the “cocoon” for those 70 and older and the medically vulnerable, as in the previous national shutdown.
Instead, Dr. Glynn said older and medically vulnerable people should stay home “as much as possible” and limit their social engagements to “very small networks for short periods of time.”
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