IRELAND’S CHIEF MEDICAL Officer has said additional measures announced this evening are aimed at suppressing the transmission of Covid-19 in the country in order “to drive it out of the community”.
This evening, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced further restrictions from midnight tonight for a two-week period until Easter Sunday, 12 April.
Everybody in Ireland has been told to stay at home for two weeks, except essential workers travelling to work and other exceptions.
The announcement comes after a further 302 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the Republic of Ireland, bringing the total here to 2,121.
Varadkar said health officials were concerned that more than 50% of the confirmed cases in Ireland involved community transmission and that clusters were developing in places such as nursing homes and residential care settings.
“We believe that now is the time for these further actions,” he said.
Speaking this evening, Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said that recent measures adopted over the past two weeks have resulted in a drop in the number of contacts associated with each case of Covid-19 in Ireland.
“This gives us encouragement that the public is working with us. We’ve also seen that the day-on-day increase in the total number of case has slowed down relative to what we might have expected a few weeks ago,” said Dr Holohan.
“But this does not tell us the worst is over. It tells us we’re having some early impact,” he said.
Dr Holohan said he remains concerned that ICU admissions for Covid-19 cases have continued to rise.
“While we think we’re still at an early point in the course of this disease we think now is the time for us to move, to strengthen the measures further, to try to spend two weeks to really suppress the transmission of this virus as much as is possible,” he explained.
Earlier today, Varadkar said that the country’s intensive care units (ICU) could reach capacity within a few days but that the health service is making an “unprecedented effort” to increase capacity.
Data released by the Health Protection Services Centre yesterday showed that as of midnight, Tuesday 24 March, 25% of cases (340) have been hospitalised, and 47 cases have been admitted to ICU.
Under further measures announced this evening, people who do leave their homes for exercise will be required to stay within a 2km radius.
Shielding or cocooning will also be introduced for all of those over 70 years of age and specific categories of people who are extremely vulnerable to Covid-19.
All visits to hospitals, residential healthcare settings, or the residential settings and prisons are to cease with specific exceptions, on compassionate grounds
All public transport and passenger travel will be restricted only to essential workers, and people providing essential services.
Dr Holohan said this evening that around 50% of Covid-19 cases in Ireland have no link to explain how a person got the virus.
“This tells us that the virus is in the community. We think in the early course of this infection, with the support we’ve had from the public, with these additional strengthening measures we can drive the infection out of the community and into households,” said Dr Holohan.
He went on to urge people who experience symptoms to self-isolate in order to keep the virus “out of the community”.
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