People may be told to stay home to allow over-70s exercise

Restricting the general public from going outside for short periods to allow older people “cocooning” to leave their homes for exercise is under consideration by the expert group advising the Government on measures to combat the spread of coronavirus.

Dr Cillian de Gascun, director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, said the measure was being examined by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) on an ongoing basis in recognition that those over 70 years were the hardest hit by the current restrictions as they had been confined to their homes for more than four weeks.

“If we want to let them out for an hour or two hours a day, well then what we may need to look at is that everyone else stays in,” said Dr de Gascun, who is a member of NPHET.

Speaking on RTÉ Prime Time on Tuesday night, Dr de Gascun said the fundamental message is that NPHET wanted people to stay at home apart from making essential journeys.

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On the question of the lifting of current restrictions on movement and gatherings, he said the issues being examined by NPHET were the number of new cases, the number of people being hospitalised, the numbers requiring treatment in intensive care units and the number of deaths.

He said the number of people currently in ICUs and receiving treatment in hospital was greater than March 28th, when the latest round of restrictions were imposed.

“We’re probably not yet at a point where we need to be in the context of suppressing this completely,” he said.

Dr de Gascun said NPHET recognised the stress placed on people's mental health by the lengthy period of cocooning and restrictions. He said the focus on the group was public health, after they had seen the damage caused by the virus, also known as Covid-19, in countries like Italy and in nursing homes.

“Nothing we are going to do next Tuesday is going to make us safer. That is really the bottom line,” said Dr de Gascun.

Testing

Earlier, Dr Tony Holohan, the chief medical officer and NPHET chairman, said he could not currently recommend lifting any of the restrictions which are due to lapse on May 5th.

Dr de Gascun acknowledged the health authorities had still not reached the desired testing level of 100,000 tests per week, but he rejected the suggestion older people were paying the price for such a failure.

The current capacity is 60,000 tests per week, which is expected to increase to 70,000 next week.

Dr de Gascun said it was important not to conflate the two issues.

“It’s not because of testing that we can’t lift the restrictions,” he said.

Dr de Gascun said the R0 infection reproduction number in Ireland had fallen from one person infected with coronavirus infecting an average of four others to less than one.

“The problem is we need to ensure it stays below one for a long period of time,” he said.

On the possibility that people will be required to wear masks in public as has been introduced in some other countries, Dr de Gascun said the evidence about their usefulness was “not very strong in any direction” but “possibly beneficial”.

However, he accepted that masks could have a role to play where people found it difficult to maintain social distancing.