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Cut socialising as Covid-19 cases rise, chief medical officer warns

Health officials said that socialisation had returned to levels not seen since the pandemic began.

Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer (Brian Lawless/PA) Expand

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Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer (Brian Lawless/PA)

Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer (Brian Lawless/PA)

Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer (Brian Lawless/PA)

By Dominic McGrath, PA

Health officials have urged people to reduce their socialising amid a big rise in Covid-19 cases.

The stark message came as health officials said that socialisation had returned to levels not seen since the pandemic began.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said that individuals should scale back the number of people they are meeting.

“That will mean cutting contacts,” he said at a briefing from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet).

If we can have most of the people observing most of the measures most of the time, that will make a huge differenceChief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan

“Perhaps it’s not what people want to hear. It’s not something I want to be telling people.”

He called on people to “ration the kinds of discretionary activity you might undertake”.

“If we can have most of the people observing most of the measures most of the time, that will make a huge difference.”

He said that Nphet was not currently considering recommending that the Government introduce fresh restrictions.

“For now, the question of restrictions is a hypothetical one,” Dr Holohan told reporters.

A further 3,174 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in Ireland on Wednesday.

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There are 460 Covid-positive patients in hospital, of whom 86 are in intensive care.

Fifty-six deaths of Covid-positive patients were recorded in the last week.

The chief medical officer stopped short of telling people to avoid nightclubs, stressing instead that cases were too high among all segments of the population and that no one activity could be blamed.

He asked people to be more careful and to cut down on “high-risk activities”.

Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of the Nphet Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (Brian Lawless/PA) Expand

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Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of the Nphet Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (Brian Lawless/PA)

Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of the Nphet Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (Brian Lawless/PA)

Professor Philip Nolan, chairman of the Nphet Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (Brian Lawless/PA)

The chairman of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group to Nphet, Professor Philip Nolan, said there were only two weeks since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when the number of cases reported was higher.

He warned that there was no way to guarantee cases would peak in the next few weeks, as anticipated.

He said it was impossible to say precisely when cases might peak and start to fall.

Prof Nolan said that some models showed that case numbers might peak in late November or early December.

However, he said that other models showed that the peak could happen later this year and case numbers may be slower to decline.

“It is very hard to say,” Prof Nolan said.

He said that people needed to change their behaviour to bring down case numbers and that rates of the virus remained very high.

Without such a high level of vaccination, he said Ireland could now be seeing well over 10,000 cases a day.

The chief medical officer said data was not yet showing that people were changing their behaviour in a way that could bring down case numbers.

However, Dr Holohan said that reducing socialising and refocusing on public health measures should be enough to get the country on the right track.

“The measures that we’re recommending, we think because we’ve seen this happen before, have the potential to bring it about but we haven’t seen the evidence of that yet.”

He warned that it was a “risky time” for cases to be so high, with only a few weeks to go until Christmas.

He said that it was sensible to get cases “down as low as we can” before the busy festive period.

Health officials also spoke directly to children, who remain largely unvaccinated.

There have been calls for the return of contact tracing in primary schools, following concerns about rising case numbers among children.

Professor Martin Cormican, the HSE clinical lead on infection control, said he wanted to thank children for their efforts over the last 18 months.

“Thank you. It has been a difficult couple of years and you’ve been brilliant.”

“The numbers we’re looking at now (are) not your fault.”

Earlier Damien McCallion, who leads the Health Service Executive (HSE)  vaccination programme, said there remained the capacity to deliver 700,000 vaccines a week.

“We have retained both the infrastructure and the staff to support this,” he told RTE radio on Wednesday.

He said the booster programme for anyone aged over 65 and in residential care had largely been completed.

The HSE will begin offering a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to anyone aged 60 and over this week.

On Wednesday morning Dr Colm Henry, chief clinical officer in the HSE, said the recent rise in coronavirus cases was putting pressure on the health system.

However, he stressed that the situation would be significantly worse if Irish people did not have the protection provided by the Covid-19 vaccine.

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