The Irish Times view on the next phase of the pandemic: preparing for the new normal

The State’s emergency response to Covid-19 is rapidly winding down. A timetable agreed by Cabinet will allow for the gradual lifting of remaining restrictions, starting today with a return to full capacity on public transport. Over coming weeks limits on attendances at sporting, cultural and religious events will be eased. A phased return to workplaces will begin. By late October, most restrictions will have gone and a period marked by the most draconian social controls adopted by the State in peacetime will give way to a new phase of the pandemic, one that emphasises citizens’ own responsibility to act in ways that keep them and the rest of the community safe.

The final lifting of those restrictions will be an important landmark, even if the moment will be freighted with the grief and pain that so many have experienced over a traumatic year-and-a-half. That the Government felt free to unwind restrictions relatively quickly is due chiefly to the remarkable success of the vaccination programme. Thanks to a superbly run logistical operation by the State and remarkable take-up among the population, 90 per cent of adults will soon have received two doses.

In the worst-case scenario the emergence of a new, more virulent or vaccine-resistant variant could send all recent progress into reverse

Yet it is possible to welcome the prospect of ordinary life resuming and to wonder a little anxiously how the country will fare now in a battle against a deadly disease that is still running rampant across the world. Up to 2,000 new cases are detected in the State every day. The death toll is low thanks to the vaccines; so too the risk of severe disease. But for those with compromised immune systems the danger remains very real. Breakthrough infections appear to be a feature of the Delta variant, and healthy young people can suffer the debilitating effects of long Covid.

Testing and tracing will be required for each one of those new cases for a long time to come, and in the worst-case scenario the emergence of a new, more virulent or vaccine-resistant variant could send all recent progress into reverse.

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It would help, therefore, were the Government to make clear exactly what its goals are as the country enters this new phase. It has rejected the case for Zero Covid as unfeasible, but what level of risk, what level of illness, is it willing to accept as the cost of easing restrictions? At what point would a reversal be triggered? How should vaccinated people modify their behaviour to prevent infection?

If schools are a point of vulnerability, given that under-12s are not vaccinated, and if keeping them open is a priority, what additional resources, whether through testing or additional surveillance, will be made available to protect them? Social restrictions are a blunt and straightforward policy instrument. Keeping Covid-19 at bay while enabling normal life to resume is in some ways a much more complex and challenging proposition.