While the White House press briefings on Covid-19 have become practically unwatchable due to the idiotic ramblings of President Trump, our own Department of Health has been relaying daily updates on the coronavirus in a calm and measured manner.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan and his colleagues are doing this country a great service during a period of social, economic and civic upheaval the likes of which we’ve never experienced previously. They are not shying from sharing information with us when they feel the time demands it of them and when they do deliver detail, it’s done free of bombast or any semblance of self-service.
When asked if, in effect, a testing process encompassing most of the population was now required, Dr Holohan stated: “Were we to test to that scale, we’d be well ahead of any other country in the world in terms of testing. We think it isn’t necessary for public health management, just as we say in respect of an individual, it isn’t necessary for a test result in order for a person to know the important measure to follow which is to self-isolate for 14 days and that the contacts who live with you in your house, the individuals who you share your house with, restrict their movements for a similar period. And as we recommend for the population now, a very substantially reduced profile of general movement and that additional burden, if you like, for people, is not that different than the recommendation for the general population in terms of significantly cutting down their movement and trying to work from home and so on as part of our general, significantly tightened measures of social distancing.”
Dr Holohan continued: “When I initially gave you (the media) some figures about what we might expect over a week or so (ago), we were, I think, predicting that we might have something in the region of 350 or so cases by the end of last week. We haven’t seen that but I think it would be too early for us to conclude even though it’s good that we have had fewer cases reported but it would be too early for us to conclude that this is a result of our social distancing measure. If I was to look for an encouraging sign in that direction, I’d be pointing more towards the reduction in the number of contacts that we have seen for each of the individual cases that the contact tracing teams are finding; that has reduced significantly over the period that the social distancing measures have been in place and that tells us that the population is responding well to the measures that we have in place.”
Dr Holohan also stressed the significance of obtaining and absorbing fact from reliable sources during this public health emergency.
“One of the most effective means, if you like, of responding to this disease is to get good quality, trusted information out to as many people as possible through the media, through social media and we’ll continue to work with you and work to try and enhance our communications with more and more targeted, strategic communications to different groups, using different media over the course of the coming weeks and months to try to ensure that we learn, if you like, first of all, from the impact of the messages that we have issued in different groups and the basis of our understanding of that, to use that analysis to continue to target, through different media, the messages to different groups of the population.”
At the time of posting this blog, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Centre had recorded 467,594 total confirmed cases of Covid-19 across 173 countries/regions in addition to 113,770 recoveries and 21,181 deaths.
The countries/regions with 100 or more confirmed Covid-19 deaths are: Italy (7,503), Spain (3,647), Hubei, China (3,613), Iran (2,077), France (1,331), The United Kingdom (465), The Netherlands (356), Germany (206), New York, USA (199), Belgium (178), Switzerland (153), South Korea (126), King County, Washington, USA (101).
Regarding the Republic of Ireland, two more people (a male and female from the east of the country) who had been diagnosed with Covid-19 died yesterday, bringing the total number of those who have died with the virus to nine. An additional 235 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed yesterday, bringing the total number of those with the virus in the State to 1,564. A total of 305 cases have been so far been hospitalised, 39 of which have been admitted to Intensive Care Units (ICUs).
Meanwhile in Northern Ireland, a seventh patient who tested positive for Covid-19 died yesterday. There are currently 209 confirmed cases of the coronavirus north of the border, with Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride contending that the rate of infection is likely to run into “many thousands”.
In all likelihood, we have many weeks and months of social upheaval yet to face into. There will be many more press briefings chaired by Dr Holohan and, no doubt, he will have a great deal of sad news to break with us in due course. It’s up to each and every one of us to ensure he’ll sit behind a microphone sooner rather than later when he can lift the national handbrake that has to remain firmly fixed for now.
Like the men and women doing such herculean work in our hospitals and test centres, Dr Holohan has the respect and gratitude of a nation as he and his team do everything they can to help us all flatten this dastardly virus’s curve.
It’s incumbent that each of us keep doing our bit, day in, day out. So wash your hands, stay at home and stay alive. We’re in this together, we’ll get through this together and in so doing emerge a stronger society on the back of it. Ní neart go cur le chéile. Stay safe, everyone.
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