HSE chief Paul Reid has warned we are at a “crossroads” in the Covid crisis.
He said that we have two choices, go left and return to the days of total lockdown we saw in April and May, or try another route and take stock of where we are and act accordingly.
Mr Reid was speaking at the HSE’s weekly operational briefing for journalists.
He also revealed that there have been a total of 35 positive cases in schools since children went back to the classrooms two weeks ago.
There were 96 group tests in schools which saw 2,100 teachers and students swabbed, delivering 35 reported positives.
There have also been two to five cases of possible inter-school transmission.
But Mr Reid opened the briefing with a serious warning about the soaring rates of Covid, in Dublin and beyond.
He urged people to “take a raincheck” and to “take stock” of where we are.
He said we should take the public health advice “seriously” because “this is all in our hands.”
Mr Reid said: “We are at a very concerning point and at a very concerning juncture.
“It’s a crossroads that we are at right now in terms of the performance of the virus.
“And when we’re at this crossroads we’ve a couple of choices to take in terms of which road we might determine to take.
“One line is that we stay on the current road that we are, the current trajectory, it is quite concerning and will only get worse if we just keep the way we are, because what we are seeing for the past week or so, for the past 14 days, in fact over the last 17 days, is a 39% increase in the number of positive cases, from 150 to 210.
“There’s been a Dublin incidence rate of 104 (in 100,000) and it’s continuing to rise.
“These are quite concerning figures concerning Dublin itself.
“If we look at this from a HSE perspective, when we were in this room talking about this in August, we would have been talking about the numbers and the hospital cases would have been around 23, and now today it is 73.
“And we would have been talking about six ICU cases, today we’re talking about 14.
“It’s a continuing rising trend, albeit, thankfully from a lower base.”
He added: “We don’t paint this picture just to be offering doom, but it is the facts and it is data and is the evidence of where we are.
“So if we stay on that road, it’s not a very good sight ahead, so we have to decide what road we do take.
“We can decide to turn right at this juncture and go back to where we were in March and April with a complete lockdown….. Another juncture is to take a radical turn left and for a time for us all to take a bit of stock, time for us all not to ignore the evidence.”
