Antigen tests should be freely available to households across Ireland to combat the surge in COVID cases, according to Professor Christine Loscher.

The Professor of Immunology at DCU was speaking to Newstalk Breakfast after 3,726 new cases were announced yesterday.

It is the 11th highest daily figure the country has faced since the pandemic began and the highest reported in over nine months.

Professor Loscher said everyone in Ireland should be self-testing twice a week.

“I completely agree that we have been backward about antigen testing,” she said.

“I think antigen testing needs to be made freely available and I think we need to get into the habit in our own households that we check everybody twice a week.

“That needs to become part of our own monitoring in everyday life. That needs to be made available and it needs to be made free.”

COVID-19

She said the rising case numbers are not surprising given the loosening of restrictions as winter sets in.

“If you look at what has happened in the month of October in all of the other European countries, we are actually seeing a very similar pattern,” she said.

“If you look particularly at countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Poland that have all had the same kind of weather change and circumstances we have had in the last month, their cases are multiplied by five, by seven and even by 20 over the last month.

“So, our cases have gone up, but they haven’t gone up to the same extent as they have in other European countries.

“Things have changed coming into the winter. Behaviour has changed and what we are doing in terms of mingling has changed but it is not out of kilter with what we are seeing elsewhere.

“This is Delta and we haven’t dealt with Delta in a winter situation before.”

Vaccine

Despite the high case figures, hospitalisations and intensive care admissions have remained relatively stable.

The number of coronavirus patients in hospital yesterday morning was down 20 on the same day last week, while the number in intensive care was down seven.

“I think we need to remind people - and immunologists have been screaming this for the last few months - vaccination is about preventing severe illness and disease; it is not about preventing you catching the infection,” said Professor Loscher.

“Delta is too good a virus for the vaccine to be able to do that in the midst of such high community transmission.”

Booster

She welcomed the rollout of booster shots to healthcare workers and called for the programme to be extended to people over the age of 55.

“We have been talking about boosters since July,” she said. “The idea of boosters and the data to support boosters has been around for months and I really think that when you look at the numbers of hospitalisations at the moment, while you focus on the disproportionate representation of unvaccinated people, the next group of people that are disproportionately represented are people over the age of 55 and 60.”

You can listen back here: