The Health Service Executive’s clinical lead on infection control, Prof Martin Cormican, has warned that the country could be looking at another Covid surge.

“We need to be very careful. We are pretty much stuck and we could be looking at another surge,” he told RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland.

“The more we come together, the more the virus spreads. The new strain spreads faster,” he added.

Hospital Report

The public needed to look at which situations were most important and to prioritise them, Prof Cormican suggested. Coming together for occasions such as wakes and birthday parties was a “huge risk” to everybody. This was evidenced by the spread of Covid in certain workplaces and other settings where people come together.

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Prof Cormican said that everything had to be done in proportion and that included mandatory quarantine which was under constant review. The main concern about travel was that people might bring a variant to Ireland that might be vaccine resistant, he said.

It was all about managing the risk, he said, adding: “Everything that we do has to be about balancing risk.” There was a balance between people being able to live their lives and controlling the virus with the lowest possible level of risk, he said.

Contact tracing

On Monday morning, infectious diseases expert Professor Sam McConkey called for “huge investment” in public health, including retraining unemployed people to help with detailed contact tracing.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show, Prof McConkey also warned that opening up the hospitality sector and multi-generational mixing could lead to a surge in cases and thousands of deaths.

The current Level 5 restrictions have not led to the same responses as were achieved in the first and second lockdowns, he said.

People were getting tired of the restrictions, which meant the country was in “a really tight spot”. He warned that if the country opened up “things will get rapidly worse.”

It could be September to November before the widespread vaccination programme was completed, he said, because of vaccine supply issues.

If there was a “huge investment” in population/public health it could mean thousands of people becoming involved in local outbreak management teams. With more staff, better IT, along with processes and governance, outbreaks could be better managed.

Volunteers and retrained unemployed people could assist with tracing and help the current staff who were struggling, he said.

There was also a role for employers, such as in providing access to GPs and sick pay. “There’s a lot that could be done better, that should have been done a year ago.”

The arrival of several new vaccines will ease the situation, he said. But it will take a little while. “When it goes from three to 12 we will be able to vaccinate the majority.”

Mandatory quarantine was important, but the majority of Covid cases were as a result of domestic contacts. Such quarantine measures were just one part of a 20-piece jigsaw, he said.

Cause for hope

Meanwhile, the HSE's chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry said there was a need to focus on the positive.

“We’re not seeing the dip we’d hoped for, but we’re not back to square one,” he told Newstalk Breakfast, adding that the current level of Covid-19 cases was “disheartening”.

Nursing home residents and staff were almost completely vaccinated as were acute frontline workers, where numbers had decreased from 1,000 in one week in February to 14 in one week recently.

The vaccination programme will reduce illness, hospitalisations and deaths in vulnerable groups which was a cause for considerable hope, he said. Vaccination enhances public-health measures, but “we cannot rely purely on vaccination alone”, he warned, as it will not lead to an immediately improved situation.

“The lower we get figures down, the more choices we will have. There are still a lot of cases out there.”

Dr Henry said he is concerned that the continuing high level of cases will lead to more hospitalisations.

When asked about the introduction of mandatory quarantine in hotels this week, he said the country was ready for it, but any public-health measures needed the support of the population. “We’ve swallowed more bitter pills in the last year,” he said.

Dr Henry said he would encourage people to “hold tight” to help protect the old and vulnerable. As the vaccination programme progresses, case numbers will come down and choices will increase, he added.