An associate professor in biochemistry says it is 'too late' to test our way out of the coronavirus pandemic, as there are too many cases.
Dr Tomás Ryan is associate professor at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
He was speaking after the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) has recommended all counties be moved to level five restrictions.
Dr Ryan told Breakfast Briefing there needs to be an end-goal in place for people, which is not there at the moment.
On the COVID-19 plan, he said: "The problem is there's never been a strategy to get to level one: we've been slipping to level four and if NPHET think we need to go to level five, I think they probably have very good reason for that.
"But the issue is that simply reducing the rate of increase of cases is not going to get you to level one.
"It's too late to test our way out of this, there's too many cases.
"The only thing that will being us down to level one, and I think ideally then to level zero, is increased restrictions.
"The only way to do this in the short-term is the hard way.
"Once we get the cases down, then we can use test-trace-isolate, public health medicine and social distancing to keep them down".
COVID-19: What would level five restrictions mean?
On NPHET's advice to Government, he said: "It's clearly a recommendation for what one would consider to be decisive action.
"Since early August cases have been rising, and nothing that we've been doing has been really taking care of this."
"This seems to be a signal that we need to take very significant measures so we can get the R number below one."
"I think NPHET are public health experts and this is their job - they have privileged access to more of the data that we do, and they have their own modelling.
"Their job is to call it as they see it, it's the Cabinets job to then enact this in a practical way.
"It does seem to me, and I think to many people around the country, that if you want this to work - if this is to have public buy-in - then people need to have confidence about what is lying at the end of this.
"Where are we going with this? Are we just going to be yoyoing in and out of these kinds of lockdowns for the next year and a half, or are we going to get to some kind of a stable state whereby once we suffer whatever is required for however long is required that is it going to be worth it or not".
'Agree on an end point'
"I think what needs to happen is there needs to be obviously a conversation between the Chef Medical Officer and the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.
"And the reality is that if we want to have a proper community effort, to use restrictions to improve our living situation, we need to have a situation whereby we can agree on the end point.
"Once we know where we're going with this - are we going for zero cases, what number of cases are we going for, how are we going to keep them suppressed - then you will get buy-in from businesses.
"I think that if you listen to people around the country what they'll say is they will put up with this in the short-term if they have confidence that the testing and tracing infrastructure at the end of it will be in a good enough situation whereby we can keep things suppressed - or ideally keep things in a zero COVID situation".
"If we have confidence that this time we'll get that right - because last time we did not get that right, we let things go over the summer - but if we have confidence that a new system can be put in place to keep things suppressed, then you can expect a situation where the Government can lead and engender public following".
