An infectious disease specialist has said house parties account for a “small percentage” of the country’s new COVID-19 cases and officials should be focusing on the situation in meat factories.
Announcing the latest batch of COVID-19 restrictions earlier this week, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin took aim at people ‘taking risks’ while socialising and made reference to an isolated incident in a Dublin bar last weekend.
However, the acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn confirmed that up to 40% of the new cases in the past two weeks “directly or very closely related” to clusters in meat factories and Direct Provision centres.
He said other clusters around the country “may well have been feeders from those.”
Strategy
On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Jack Lambert, Professor in Infectious Diseases at the Mater Hospital said officials need to attack clusters as they occur to keep the virus in check.
“If there are clusters in one location, we have to go to other locations that have similar demographics and make sure that they all have the appropriate COVID prevention strategies in place,” he said.
“If there are 50 meat factories, you don’t just go to one, close it down and let the other 49 potentially flare up.
“You have to have a clear plan for all of the clusters of similar demographics and we haven’t done that.
“The recent flare-ups down the country are the exact same flare-ups that we had back in March and April and I did comment that they are going to happen again.
“They will happen time and time again if we don’t intervene.”
Clusters
He noted that four weeks ago, the narrative around the virus was focused on international travel, even though it only accounted for around 10% of the cases here.
“If all the outbreaks are happening because young adults are having parties in private homes then, yes, that is a consideration,” he said.
“But that is a small percentage as far as I can see at the current time. That is not where the clusters are.”
He said officials should be working to convince young people to follow the guidelines instead of threatening more restrictive measures.
“There are problems with young adults but what do you do? Do you try to wag a finger at them and lock them down or do you try to actually put messages out to them to try to emphasise to them the importance of doing the right thing?” he asked.
“I think we should be doing some education now, proactively supporting ad campaigns, maybe with rugby stars – what is going to make a teenage kid listen to the importance of using a mask when they can’t socially distance?
“There are strategies besides punitive strategies and we haven’t actually looked at those. We have to brainstorm what the Irish plan is.”
COVID-19
Professor Lambert said Ireland is capable of living with the virus – but only if people can be encouraged to do all they can to prevent transmission.
“People ask whether we are getting complacent,” he said. “I think we have never been compliant.
“It is only in the last couple of weeks we have actually got a mandate, ‘wear a mask 100% in closed environments.’
“It is a requirement. Yes, if we wear a mask, if we socially distance, if we hand-wash; we can control this virus until the magic vaccine comes along.”
