THERE'S a chance Ireland could be rid of Covid-19 by Autumn, according to an Irish immunologist.
Dr Tomas Ryan, Associate Professor at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, insisted that the country had taken "a step in the right direction" by delaying the entry to Phase Four of the reopening plan, and that doing so could help Ireland eliminate coronavirus in time to get schools and businesses back into action before the end of the year.
Speaking on Newstalk’s Pat Kenny Show, he said: "A lot of publicans and restaurant owners appreciate that being at 50 per cent capacity for the next year-and-a-half to two years is really not an ideal way of doing business.
"The advantage of taking a zero-Covid approach or a near-elimination approach, as is being explicitly pursued in Scotland by Nicola Sturgeon, is that it allows you a situation where you can have 100 per cent capacity.
"I think a lot of people working in that sector would like to see the country take that approach where, if we really take control of this and take control of our borders, then we could have 100 per cent capacity in bars, restaurants and pubs and have no fears about schools reopening.
"That is a decision that would need to be taken by Government within the coming few weeks, but what is clear is that many of the noises they have been making in the past 24-hours, I think, have been extremely encouraging."
He went on to praise the cautious approach by the new government, insisting that no one measure will be able to keep us safe from Covid-19 and that it would need a significant collective to end the crisis as quickly as possible.
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