Experts are warning that the Government’s COVID-19 strategy is doomed to fail unless Ireland’s “inadequate” testing and tracing system is improved.

It comes as Government ministers prepare to vote on the latest advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET).

Older and vulnerable people are expected to be asked to limit their time outdoors once again with indoor family gatherings to be reduced to just six people.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Trinity Professor Tomás Ryan and NUI Maynooth Professor Paul Moynagh agreed that, without improved testing and tracing, the guidelines are unlikely to have the desired effect.

“Clearly, we have a problem,” said Professor Ryan. “Clearly what we are doing is not working so clearly, we need to make a change.

“The kind of measures that have been discussed are very mild measures on the whole and it seems to me, we need much more investment on a number of fronts – including principally our test trace isolation infrastructure right now.”

Professor Moynagh warned that asking people to cocoon once again, five months into the outbreak, may not be sustainable in the long term.

“I can see why they are proposing this and concentrating in terms of human behaviour but as well as looking at each of our behaviours, and we all have to reflect on that, I think there also needs to be some reflection in terms of the State’s response as well,” he said.

A man walks on the Curragh Plains in County Kildare, 05-05-2020. Image: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews

The two academics disagree on what the government should do next, with Professor Ryan calling for a zero-COVID approach and Professor Moynagh questioning whether that is possible anymore.

Professor Ryan said the country now faces a clear choice.

“We need to decide whether we want to open up fully; open up the economy and open up society – and for that we need to be approaching elimination of the virus in Ireland,” he said.

“If we want to live with the virus, we need to level with ourselves about what that means because living with the virus means living with restrictions.

“We need to figure out what those workable restrictions are and we need to be honest about the areas of society that are going to have to continue to struggle.”

A lab technician holding a COVID-19 test tube that contains blood sample from a patient.Image: Robin Utrecht / SOPA Images/Sipa USA)

Both agree that regardless of which strategy the Government goes for, the country’s testing and tracing system needs serious improvement.

“One thing that Paul and I would completely agree on is that the crucial mechanism in the hands of the State – not in the hands of teenagers misbehaving, not in the hands of publicans – is the test, trace, isolation infrastructure,” said Professor Ryan.

“It has been inadequate from the beginning, it never got built up to reasonable levels, it was never fast enough to prevent asymptomatic or presymptomatic spread and over the last two weeks it has gotten slower.

“That is evidence it can’t cope under stress and no good strategy is going to be workable until pressure is put on the HSE and Government to deliver proper testing and tracing.”

You can listen back to the full debate here: