Covid, the 'meaningful' Christmas, and what will a review achieve?
Hamilton Park Nursing Home resident 98-year-old Eddie Burtenshaw (right) with his wife of 70 years Gladys Burtenshaw (aged 95) embracing for the first time in 10 months having previously only seen each other through perspex partition during the pandemic in 2020. Bereaved families, understandably, are keen to know what lessons were learned from the early days of the pandemic which saw residents of such homes among the worst affected by the disease. Photo: Julien Behal
On December 22, 2020, the Department of Health played host to a management meeting.
In attendance were the acting secretary general of the Department Colm O'Reardon and his senior officials, and, as was often the case during the covid pandemic, senior representatives from the national public health emergency team (Nphet), the State’s covid taskforce.
The meeting was a regular one, but the tidings being delivered were not.
In a subsequent summary of what had been discussed for his own staff, one senior official noted that covid-19 was now rampant in Ireland, with 700 cases recorded in just two days — the fastest the disease had been seen to spread in the country since the pandemic began the previous March.
“If it wasn’t Christmas week, you would certainly come to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be having the pubs open and people planning to see family over Christmas,” he said.
Describing Nphet’s intense concern at the “sobering” situation, the official urged his staff to “stay safe” over Christmas. “All we can do is mind our own kind of behaviour in our own families,” he said. The situation was clearly dire.
One week previously, chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan had delivered a bleak update to the department, stating that the disease was progressing at pace across all age groups of the population. He stressed that the health service was still not in a position to respond effectively to even a limited surge in the virus, which up to that point had only ever been quelled effectively by one action — strict lockdown of the population.
The issue was being exacerbated by the limited take-up in the flu vaccine seen that season, with much of the stockpiles of the flu vaccine having gone unused up to that point, Dr Holohan said.
In the aftermath of that meeting, department officials privately expressed concern that the weeks following Christmas were likely to lead to a “carnage” in the country’s hospitals not seen since the early surges of the virus from March 2020.
The previous month the Irish Government, under then Taoiseach Micheál Martin, had committed to a so-called ‘meaningful Christmas’, with the relaxation of lockdown regulations including the confinement of citizens to within their own county and the re-opening of hospitality venues.
However, the festive season would subsequently become meaningful for a second reason — with vehement accusations come the new year that it had inspired the resultant surge in covid numbers. That surge led to the country's hospitals being swamped in the early weeks of 2021 at a time when covid vaccines were not yet publicly available.
The Government placed the blame on the advent of the then novel Alpha variant of covid, arguing that its prevalence could not have been predicted.
The meetings and decision-making behind the move to re-open the country that Christmas are likely to form a key consideration of the pending national review of how the State planned for and handled the covid pandemic.
Dr Holohan, after leaving office, would claim in his memoir that many of the 1,500 covid deaths recorded in January 2021 — the single biggest death toll of any month during the pandemic — could have been prevented had lockdown measures been maintained or re-applied.
The fact the virus was spreading at a lightning pace at the time was not a secret. The public briefings of Nphet were stressing that fact on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, the Government opted to relax the restrictions, perhaps understandably politically given the country had been under lock and key for nearly a year at that stage.
Asked why the Government had not been advised specifically against the relaxation of covid measures in advance of Christmas 2020, a Department of Health spokesperson referred the to the letters delivered by Dr Holohan to then Health Minister Stephen Donnelly across December 2020.
This correspondence underlined the “grave” situation the country was facing as of December 21, 2020, and stated that a return to the most draconian Level 5 lockdown restrictions should be considered — but not until December 28.
The Department of the Taoiseach did not reply to a request for comment on the same matter.
Department of Health whistleblower Shane Corr — who rose to prominence following a series of disclosures involving departmental and HSE financial practices from 2021 onwards — is of the opinion that “the Government doesn’t really know what it wants” from the pending covid review.
Mr Corr remains on permanent paid suspension from the department in the wake of the issues he raised. He was also heavily involved in administering the €73m Covid Temporary Assistance Payments Scheme, which was targeted at financially aiding nursing homes which had been decimated by the virus.
Whether deaths which occurred in nursing homes were avoidable will be another key pillar of the covid review. Bereaved families, understandably, are keen to know what lessons were learned from the early days of the pandemic which saw residents of such homes among the worst affected by the disease.
“From March, when the images of covid causing havoc in Bergamo (Italy) began to come through, from then we started to get messages in regard to what was happening in nursing homes,” Mr Corr says.
Mr Corr says that in examining the various applicants to TAPS, it became clear that there were some nursing homes which had no outbreaks whatsoever.
“I was told by a member of management about one home in Lusk (north Dublin) with no outbreaks. I said ‘that’s amazing, has anyone tried to see why that’s the case’. The answer was no,” he says.
“Instead, all I saw was chaos, and a rush to provide money.”
Of the coming covid review, Mr Corr says he is of the opinion that “the Government has a lot to hide”.
“We should be having a full, proper inquiry in terms of the nursing homes, the meaningful Christmas — which itself was just political will trumping common sense.
The whistleblower is of the opinion that the meaningful Christmas itself should be contrasted with a letter sent by then Attorney General Seamus Woulfe to the Minister for Health Simon Harris on April 8, 2020.
That letter accompanied a final draft of the covid-19 regulations — laws which would in effect make it illegal for people to leave their homes — and stressed Mr Woulfe’s deep reservations about the new laws given the “huge significance” of the impact they would have on people’s lives.
It also stressed that in coming up with the regulations, Mr Harris had had regard to “the up-to-date advice” of both the Garda Commissioner and, in particular, chief medical officer Tony Holohan.
“The key question is — they put the CMO’s advice ahead of the legal advice in signing those regulations into law,” Mr Corr says.
“Yet, later in the same year when the CMO again advised the country could not afford to re-open for Christmas, that advice was ignored. Why did they do that? That is the question that needs to be answered.”
