However, the CMO also said that “this is not inevitable”.
There could be 200,000 Covid-19 cases in Ireland next month, 4,000 of which could end up in hospital, according to Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Tony Holohan.
The CMO made the grim forecast on RTÉ’s News at One after the Government on Tuesday announced a new range of restrictions to combat rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations.
Holohan said that despite Ireland’s “really high vaccination rates”, the transmissible Delta variant still requires the public to “maintain a high level of adherence to other public health measures” in order to avoid further surges of Covid infection.
“That’s the experience of every country that’s dealing with Delta… Vaccines alone are really good in protecting, particularly against severe infection, but on their own won’t be enough to prevent transmission,” he explained.
“We need to do more in terms of our collective adherence to the messages.
“So, if we think about the month of December, which is just around the corner, we predict that on the modelling that we could have as many as 200 [in intensive care units], and potentially as many as double that, if we don’t make some progress in terms of cutting transmission.
“None of those people are infected yet. Not one person [that] is going to have this infection in December has picked up this infection yet. So, it’s not inevitable.
“And we think that about 2% – in other words, 20 out of every 1,000 – of those cases that might occur, and that could be as few as 200, it could be a much bigger number [of] 200,000 cases, about 20 out of every 1,000 of those will end up in hospital.
“They will all be advised to self-isolate and their contacts will be advised to restrict their movement.
“That’s a lot of people in hospital, potentially 4,000 or more. It’s a lot of people being asked to self-isolate and restrict movements.
“None of those people are infected yet and at the time of year when none of us wants to be faced with going into hospital or having a loved one going into hospital, none of us wants to be faced with being advised to restrict our movements or to self-isolate.”
Holohan was then quizzed on what strain hospitals will be under over the next number of weeks based on what the country has already seen in relation to Covid-19 infections.
“We’ve been estimating based on the modelling that like, if we continue and we don’t have some improvement in terms of the level of transmission that we’re seeing in the population, that we will have in excess at a minimum of 1,000 people in hospital at some point during the course of the month of December.
“And we could have many more than that depending on the various assumptions around transmission.”
However, Holohan added that “this is not inevitable” as potential Covid infections in December have not been picked up yet.
“There’s still two weeks between now and the beginning of December, so a minimum of 200,000 cases occurring in December, all of which are preventable. Each one of us can take simple measures,” he explained.
“People who are cases and who are symptomatic, they simply must self-isolate and then get a PCR test. Not an antigen test.”
He also called on close contacts of confirmed cases to restrict their movements and be antigen tested and urged the public to continue to wash their hands, wear a mask, limit their contacts and avoid crowds.
Main image via Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie
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