Specific limit on the number of close contacts a possible restriction after Level 5 surveys

A LIMITATION ON the weekly number of close contacts per individual is a possible restriction that could arise after the lifting of Level 5 restrictions.

The director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, Cillian De Gascun, has said that a specific limitation on the number of close contacts could help keep transmission low after Level 5 restrictions are eased next month.

Speaking to Katie Hannon on RTÉ Radio One on Saturday, De Gascun said the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) is considering how to prevent an increase in Covid-19 transmission after current restrictions are lifted.

“Nobody wants to go through Level 5 restrictions on and off. That’s not really useful for anyone, ”De Gascun said.

He said public health officials “may need to look at a situation where there are a limited number of close contacts that we can have in a weekly period.”

NPHET would need to consider the “specific number” of close contacts that could be allowed in a week under such a restriction.

“The challenge is to identify what that number of close contacts is going to be because we want the R0 to be ideally less than one, and the problem is if we are considering, for example, three close contacts versus four close contacts, that could change the balance of an R0 of less than one to more than one, ”said De Gascun.

We need to focus on what we want to prioritize as a society and then what we can do from a discretionary perspective. “

De Gascun said that a limit on close contacts would not necessarily eliminate social settings like pubs and restaurants.

“We will have to look at what are the high-risk environments and the low-risk environments,” he said.

“It all comes down to wanting to live most of our lives in a safe way and at the same time preventing cases from increasing dramatically as they did in October

“We want this to be beneficial and we want to take advantage of it and we don’t want it to be a waste of time.

When we get out of six weeks, we can’t do what we did in August and September, because obviously that didn’t work. “

“So what we will be doing from an NPHET perspective over the next two weeks together with colleagues from HSE and the Center for Health Protection Surveillance is looking at how we can improve in December and January,” De Gascun said.

Level 5 restrictions went into effect on October 22 and are currently due to be lifted on December 1.