"It will take very little for us to lose the good work that has been done"
Dr Tony Holohan, the Chief Medical Officer, has tonight called for continued vigilance around the physical distancing measures in place in Ireland. It comes as anecdotal experiences of people seeing increased movement of people in the country was verified by data published earlier today.
At this evening's Department of Health Covid-19 Coronavirus briefing, it was confirmed that
28 further people have died from the virus, with 936 additional new cases also confirmed. That brings the death toll in the Republic of Ireland to at least 794, while the confirmed number of cases of the virus now stands at 17,607.
Ireland has been under strict physical distancing measures since March 27th, initially for a two week period, but this was extended until May 5th on Good Friday. As it stands, the
current reproduction number in Ireland, i.e. the number of people an infected person would be expected to transmit the virus to, has been reduced to an estimated 0.54. It had been somewhere between 2 and 4 at the beginning of the outbreak here.
Data revealed by Dr Holohan and Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, shows that there has been increased footfall, movement and vehicular traffic in recent days. Using data from the Irish National Seismic Network, usually used to measure earthquake activity, has shown a notable increase in the movement of people in recent days, after a sharp drop following the lockdown introduced almost four weeks ago.
https://twitter.com/RobOHanrahan/status/1253373881206951946
Professor Philip Nolan was unequivocal in his remarks this evening; "Our R number is between 0.5 and 0.8. This success emphasises how vital it is to remain vigilant in our behaviours. If the R number moves above one, we are no longer in control of the disease.
"The numbers are not were we want them to be, they are going in the right direction."
Dr Holohan was also keen to impress upon the public that while things are certainly moving in the right direction, this is no time for complacency. He acknowledged that people may also be showing increased levels of movement due to "frustration, which is understandable", but that if they were making recommendations on relaxing physical distancing measures today, they would not be asking the government to be making any changes to the current lockdown in place; "it will take very little for us to lose the good work that has been done".
Research conducted on behalf of the Department of Health, also published this evening, shows that 19% of people expect the restrictions to end in May, while one in five people believe this will not occur until August or September. The government this week confirmed that all mass gatherings in excess of 5,000 would be
banned in Ireland until the end of August.
