LAST UPDATE | 23 Dec 2020

IRISH HEALTH OFFICIALS have said that preliminary data suggests that the new Covid-19 variant spreading in the UK is present in Ireland. 

Research is being undertaken on the new variant to determine if it is more infectious than other strains of the coronavirus after UK health officials said it could be up to 70% more transmissible. 

Speaking earlier this week, director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory Dr. Cillian De Gascun said the variant had not yet been identified in Ireland but that its presence here couldn’t be ruled out.  

The variant has been seen in the UK as far back as 20 September. 

In a statement today, De Gascun said that testing indicates that the variant is present in samples in Ireland. 

“Preliminary data would suggest, based on a selection of samples analysed from the weekend, that the novel variant from the UK is present in Ireland.”

He added: 

However, given the timeline of the samples analysed, it would seem that the novel variant is not solely responsible for the recent increase in case numbers seen in Ireland.

Speaking at a briefing this evening, De Gascun said the variant has been here since at least mid-December but that analysis is being carried out to see how far back it has been present. 

The work that we’ve done since the weekend would have been samples that would have been taken over the weekend so, 18th-20th. So if those people would have been infected, I guess a week before that so certainly it’s been here probably since the second week in December.

“But as a part of the work that we’ll be doing is going back in time to see when exactly it first appeared.”

De Gascun added that based on analysis so far the new variant does not appear to be nearly as common in Ireland as it is in the UK:

Based on very early work that we’ve done it represented about just under 10% of the sequences that we looked at, so if we go by what the UK has seen  they initially reported last weekend that it was accounting for over 60% in the most affected regions. So we’re obviously a long way off that but obviously it may be on the way up so we will keep it under review.  

Concern over the strain has led to a slew of European countries, including Ireland, suspending flights from the UK.

Announcing tougher new restrictions over the Christmas period, Taoiseach Micheál Martin also said that the government was “proceeding on the assumption” that the variant was already here. 

As to the potential that the new strain is more infectious than other strains, De Gascun has said there was “no hard evidence” that it is more transmissible but that it is “prudent” to act on the basis that this is the case. 

Speaking this evening, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tony Holohan said there there is no evidence at this point that there is “widespread transmission” of the new variant. 

“We’ve seen a significant amount of socialisation, we simply have to operate and I think the precautionary thing from our point of view and the message that the public has to take on board is that it is our own behaviour that determines what we have seen.

Irrespective of which of the genomic makeup is of the virus that may be transmitting at this point in time, the measures that we each can take individually to limit transmission are exactly the same. If people stay at home, if they limit their social contacts and stay away from other people, if they stay away from one another when symptomatic and all of those simple measures that we continue to recommend, they will be protected against whichever variant we’re talking about.

The new variant led to London and parts of southern and eastern England being rushed into a new stricter Tier 4 regime, effectively cancelling Christmas plans and imposing measures similar to previous national lockdowns.