An infectious disease specialist has warned that breaches of the COVID-19 travel restrictions would see this weekend becoming Ireland’s Cheltenham.
Gardaí are running a major operation to ensure people stay in their homes and do not attempt to travel over the holiday weekend.
It comes as residents in tourist hotspots voiced fears over the number of people arriving in over recent days.
Twenty-five further COVID-19 patients were confirmed dead in the Republic yesterday alongside 5 in the North – bringing the total on the island of Ireland to 313.
Meanwhile the number of confirmed cases north and south stands at 7,413.
COVID-19 flood
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Dr Paddy Mallon from St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin said the “expected flood” in cases has not hit Irish hospitals.
“That is almost exclusively down to the actions that everyone in the country has taken with social distancing, backed up by what I would have to say are very good government responses,” he said.
“I think the Government moved at the right time and I think we are seeing the benefits from that but we are in a really delicate position.”
We’re doing really great work to #FlattenTheCurve but our ICU beds are nearly full...
Heading out or traveling THIS WEEKEND will result in SURGE that we dont have capacity to cope with.
It’s really that simple
People will die.#StayHomeSaveLives
C’mon Ireland 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/pM3bGcrcdT— Ciara Kelly (@ciarakellydoc) April 8, 2020
Cheltenham
He said one of the biggest mistakes made in the UK was allowing the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead.
“They are now looking back at that saying it was probably one of the seminal events in the UK that led to the widespread dissemination of this infection,” he said.
“We are at a similar scenario this weekend.
“If people in the population centres of the east decide to take off this weekend, then this weekend will be our Cheltenham and we will be sitting here in two weeks with an absolute disaster.
“But if everyone just sits tight, sticks with the message to stay home this weekend, we could be sitting here this time next week seeing the rates of hospitalisations and the rates of new infections really starting to drop off quite quickly.”
“Stay at home and eat chocolate”
He said the country is now at a really critical time – and a huge amount depends on people making the right decisions in the coming days.
“We have survived the flood and there is a huge amount of work going on in the background to prepare us for the next phase but it is really critical that everyone in the country sticks with the plan over the next week,” he said.
“Just forget about it being a bank holiday weekend. Treat this as any other weekend we have had in the past two weeks and if people do that, stay home and eat chocolate, by this time next week we could be seeing some really good news coming out.”
