The Irish Times view on Covid-19 strategy: the tracing gap exposed

In a country that fixates on the daily Covid-19 case tally, the interruption – perhaps even the reversal – of progress in suppressing the virus feels like a demoralising blow. How, with social and economic life on pause for three months, can infections possibly be on the rise again?

Case numbers are important – they tell us about the prevalence of the virus in the community – but caveats accompany them. Delayed reporting and test bulges can all skew the numbers from day to day; more instructive is the general trend. Moreover, case numbers are just one indicator among several – others are hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths – that must inform policy decisions. So while it is undoubtedly a concern that cases appear to be increasing, it is encouraging that pressure on hospitals is steady if not decreasing and that the daily average death toll is substantially down on this time last month. Perhaps the most positive signal of all comes from serial testing of nursing homes, where nearly all residents and staff have been vaccinated and where the positivity rate is at just 0.2 per cent, according to the Health Service Executive last week.

All the evidence suggests the situation will improve substantially as the vaccination campaign picks up pace

As the vaccination campaign expands, more people receive coverage and fewer people fall ill as a proportion of the infected population, the daily case count will become less important. The problem is that we’re not yet at the point where the current level of community transmission is tolerable. Far from it. The over-70s will not be fully protected until the middle of May and tens of thousands of others with chronic health conditions must also be vaccinated. For now the State has no real choice but to prioritise suppression.

Its efforts are undermined by its apparent ignorance of the transmission patterns. A lack of retrospective contact tracing means the authorities appear not to know what is driving the recent stalling of the decline in cases. A year into the pandemic, that's not good enough. It costs a lot to run a contact tracing operation at a scale that could pick up that information, but it costs a lot more – more than €1 billion a month, according official figures – to keep the country shut down. To make the situation more galling, the public must listen to lobby groups with a platform, like the Construction Industry Federation, line up to engage in special pleading for the reopening of their sectors.

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Any changes to restrictions in early April will be minimalist, and should prioritise easing pressure on individuals – through loosening the 5km exercise rule, for example – before allowing people to gather at the workplace again.

All the evidence suggests the situation will improve substantially as the vaccination campaign picks up pace. The speed of the rollout is due to increase from April onwards, and by early summer a critical mass of the population should have some protection. But waiting for that day is not a strategy.