Q&A: Where does Ireland stand on coronavirus, as we prepare for Phase 2?

Where does Ireland stand in relation to the coronavirus now?

We’re frankly in a pretty good position. While our death per capita ranking has never been particularly pretty (Ireland is eighth globally in the table with a mortality rate of 6.6%), new confirmed cases and deaths have slowed, not quite to a trickle, but nevertheless significantly. Meanwhile, there are just over 1,100 active cases of the virus around the country, with Dr Tony Holohan, the chief medical officer, suggesting repeatedly that Covid-19 has been effectively suppressed in the community. To date there have been 24,841 confirmed cases of the virus in Ireland, with 1,639 deaths. Some 89% of those who contracted the disease have since recovered.

If it’s gone from the community, where is the virus?

It remains concentrated in healthcare settings, long-term residential care facilities, and certain workplaces (meat processing factories having been particularly badly hit), though to a far lesser extent than a month ago.

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How do we know it’s gone from the community?

We know this because the country is a great deal more educated about Covid-19 than it was at the start of March when schools and creches became the first societal institutions to be closed, and because the testing regime is now running at a capacity which would have been unheard of even a month ago.

Today, if someone is feeling in any way ill they will probably qualify for, and undergo, a test on the same day. Negative results are being processed in less than two days, while positives are being fully contact-traced in three days. At present new confirmed cases are running at about one tenth the levels seen at the virus’s peak in mid-April, while Monday of this week was the first day without a reported death since March 22.

How about testing?

For over a month the HSE was under constant pressure to ramp up testing capacity to the oft-heard level of 100,000 per week. That target was finally met two weeks ago. Some 330,000 tests have now been completed, but capacity at present is far outstripping demand, a fact which has allowed the HSE to focus on a granular level on different facets of society. At present, the executive says it’s targeting close contacts of confirmed cases, and has been since last week. That has seen close to 400 people proactively offered, and accepting, a test, with a 12% positivity rate. With self-isolation and social distancing very much part of the new normal, suppressing the illness is a great deal simpler than it was eight weeks ago.

What about the R number?

Perhaps the most crucial figure in terms of measuring the spread of an infection, the R0 (R-naught), or reproductive rate of the virus, is now a maximum of 0.5 (so only one in two people with the virus is infecting someone else). At the beginning of the crisis the figure was roughly 4. Left unchecked, our death rate would have been many multiples of the figure we have.

If the virus has been so well suppressed, why is it going to take until September to reopen the country?

This is the million dollar question. The simple answer is that cautious public health advice has served us well to date and the Government is loath to abandon it, even if our emergence from restrictions is set to be one of the most drawn-out on the planet. But we’re at a stage where political considerations will start to trump medical ones. Expect a number of compromises to be made in the coming weeks and days, with the 2m social distancing standard likely the first to go.

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