A leading infectious disease expert has said Covid-19 won’t be stable in Ireland until our daily cases are in single digits.
Professor Sam McConkey, who is head of the department of international health and tropical medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), also said he is self-isolating after a close contact had experienced symptoms and was awaiting a test result.
He told RTE Radio One: “Everyone is starting to feel that optimism and hope of the coronavirus vaccine coming – that’s all great, this turning is happening.
“But I think at the same time as all that we are in the middle of a very brisk third wave that’s clearly bigger than the second wave.
“It’s clearly worse than we were back in October, so we do need this cohesive action again.
“So I’d like to see that we get down to a really stable place of tiny numbers – let’s say single digit numbers in our country – because then it’s possible to keep it down for many, many months with traditional outbreak investigation, contact tracing and public health support and expertise.
“Whereas it’s very unstable as we’ve seen – in early December the numbers were around 200 or 300 – but that’s not a stable place to sit at at all, it just rapidly jumps up”.
Prof McConkey's comments come as hopes grow that the first Covid-19 vaccine will be doled out on December 29 – a day earlier than originally planned.
HSE chief Paul Reid said today that "some" vaccinations will take place on Tuesday, amid mounting pressure on public health bosses to begin inoculating the most vulnerable members of society.
Speaking on RTE's This Week programme, Mr Reid said: "My expectation is we will get some vaccinations done on the 29th, which would be on the Tuesday."
He said the plan was to start vaccinating people in nursing homes across the country over an initial three week period before giving them a second dose over the following three weeks.
