IRELAND COULD return to strict lockdown by as early as February if the government lifts Level 5 restrictions at Christmas.
That’s according to DCU Health Systems Professor Anthony Staines who has warned that the current plan for six weeks of strict restrictions will not be enough for cases of Covid-19 to drop to a level where Ireland’s economy can safely reopen.
Earlier this week, the Government confirmed the country would be moving up to a Level 5 lockdown from midnight on Wednesday.
Speaking with Shane Beatty on Newstalk’s Breakfast Briefing, Professor Staines acknowledged that the lockdown would “certainly reduced the number of virus cases” but warned it would not get the country to a “level at which it would be safe to simply reopen again.”
“We are probably going to find ourselves, as the Taoiseach said in his press conference last night, going back into a significant level of restrictions — he was talking about Level Three — with all the attendant costs of that for our lives and for our businesses,” he said.
He warned that the Government appears to be aiming to keep Ireland at a Level 3 lockdown “indefinitely” or until a vaccine is available.
However, he warned that a vaccine may not be available until next summer or “a bit longer” if the current drug trials proved unsuccessful.
“I think if we had a clear goal and we decided we were going to bring this down to very low numbers, single cases a day, which is a level that public health can cope with, that would probably take eight or ten weeks across most of the country and longer in Dublin, that is just the realities of the numbers we have.”
(Photo by PAUL FAITH/AFP via Getty Images)While he warned that the six-week lockdown wouldn’t bring about a dramatic change, Professor Staines expects the Department of Health to report a drop of around 300 to 400 cases per day by early December.
From there, he fully expects case numbers to increase again, leading to another lockdown.
“That will run through December or perhaps start rising again and in January and February it will continue to rise further and at some point in February we will be back roughly where we are now and we will then rinse and repeat,” he said.
“We have already done this once. We managed to get down from very high levels in April and May to very small numbers of cases in June.
“Unfortunately, the advice at that time to continue with restrictions was not taken and we now find ourselves with cases ramping up again and the health service under significant threat.”
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