NPHET to discuss effect of rise in Covid-19 cases on re-opening of schools

The implications of the increased incidence of Covid-19 on the planned re-opening of schools is among the issues that will be looked at when the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) meets on Monday, the acting Chief Medical Officer has said.

On Saturday there were 200 new cases of Covid-19 reported, the highest number diagnosed in a single day since the beginning of May. On Sunday a further 66 cases were reported.

Dr Ronan Glynn said it was to be welcomed that Sunday's figure was lower than Saturday's, but over the past fourteen days almost 1,100 new cases had been reported, and NPHET was particularly focused on the trend over time.

“Our incidence is now running at 23 [cases] per hundred thousand of population,” he said, which was “a very significant escalation.”

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NPHET will hold a formal meeting on Monday where it will review the available data and consider whether to make any additional recommendations to Government.

Earlier on Sunday the Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, health minister Stephen Donnelly and Dr Glynn met to discuss the recent spike in cases.

A meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Covid-19 is to be held on Tuesday.

Dr Glynn said the priority was to suppress the disease, to ensure that the resumed provision of healthcare services can continue, and to ensure that community transmission is kept as low as possible so schools can re-open in two weeks’ time.

Asked when interviewed on the 6pm RTÉ TV news if schools might not re-open as scheduled, he said that clearly that topic would be part of Nphet’s considerations on Monday.

The data would be examined, and any recommendations made to Government would be based on evidence and aimed at ensuring that as many people as possible could be kept as safe as possible “from the virus that is still out there.”

Asked if there might be local lockdowns, he said that there had been new cases of Covid right across the country over the past fortnight.

Clearly there were issues in the Midlands, “but we are seeing a dispersion of cases in ever county and every region in the country. So we need to consider what needs to be done in that context.”

Asked about the images that were published on social media on Saturday of people dancing and drinking in the Berlin D2 on Dame Lane in Dublin, and not observing the social distancing rules, Dr Glynn said it was not a surprise that people might become complacent but what had occurred on Saturday afternoon had been “reckless”.

“It simply cannot be tolerated,” he said. Such behaviour put at risk the work that the majority of people had put into suppressing the virus.

It was not tolerable that exhausted healthcare workers had to “wake up this morning and see images like that.”