One of Ireland’s top consultants believes it’s too early to ease Covid-19 restrictions.
Professor Sam McConkey of the Royal College of Surgeons said we could risk bringing the virus back all over again if measures are lifted too soon.
He wants people to “pull together” and accept the advice of Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan, who has urged the public not to flout restrictions after a worrying surge in people going out and about in recent days.
Speaking on RTE's Saturday with Cormac Ó hEadhra, he said that despite the reproductive number dropping to 0.5 in the community, it could take more time for the bug to "fizzle out."
He also warned that this figure is just in the community, and could be much higher in other settings.
He said: "Even if the R number is 0.5 it takes several weeks for it to fizzle out and unfortunately we've got some groups particularly nursing homes and residential institutions where they've been very badly hit by this.
"If we stop [social distancing now] it will simply come back."
Asked about how many tests we would need per day in order to safely reopen the economy while practising social distancing, Mr McConkey admitted there "isn't one fixed answer".
He said: "If we're still getting 400 to 600 cases a day as we are at present then many of their contacts who get a little snuffle will need to be tested.
"The answer to that depends on how many cases per day we're getting. If cases go down into single figures or even into double figures then the number of tests we need is less.
"Then we 'd want to be testing maybe people coming into the country, healthcare workers and people with symptoms.
"If you're very fast on testing, contact tracing and isolating the contacts you can get ahead of it. And that involves getting the information out to contacts as quickly as possible."
