Deputy chief medical officer hopeful measures will have impact on Covid-19 levels

The deputy chief medical officer at the Department of Health, Dr Ronan Glynn has said that he is hopeful that restriction measures will have an impact on levels of the coronavirus.

“We are hopeful that what we are seeing in terms of people's behaviour, I think we've seen a really unprecedented level of compliance and willingness to adhere to the measures that we've recommended and ultimately it's that that will make the difference here.

“It's not ICU capacity, it's not the hospital system, it's everybody in their homes doing their bit,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.

“The numbers each day underpin the message that we're trying to get out there, that whilst these measures are difficult for people they really are essential in helping us to over come this in the coming weeks and months."

Dr Glynn added that the National Public Health Emergency Team has been "concerned' about some trends emerging in the spread of Covid 19.

He said: “We've been concerned for a number of weeks about community transmission because it's increased over that time.

"Now it's not unusual for levels of community transmission to increase in the context of an outbreak like this, but keeping it at a simple level, community transmission means that people are picking it up and we don't know where those individuals have got it from so we can't link them back to other confirmed cases.

“When that happens it makes it harder for us to control the spread of it so community transmission will remain one of the key factors that we look at when we consider how we're progressing with this.

He added: “We'd always like it to be lower, but really the first set of measures were only brought in two weeks ago today - that's 14 days, one incubation period, so really we're at the earliest stage of expecting to see positive effects from those measures and so really we'll be looking forward into next week and the week after, first if all if the measures that we've taken have had an effect, but then crucially it's to sustain that over time, it's not a case of a very short sharp beneficial effect over a day or two days.

“We're going to have to sustain this over a number of weeks."

Dr Glynn said that within the overall number of cases they are monitoring the number of health care staff infections "very closely."

“We will be doing a fuller analysis on various subgroups within the overall number of cases and clearly health care workers is one group that we'll be looking at very closely," he said.

“The figure that we report for health care workers that doesn't give a break down of where they contracted it, it's not a given that they all contracted it in the course of their work. Regardless of where they contracted it, it is a concern, because clearly every single person who worked in our health services at any time is vital, but never more than at the moment.

He added: “We have tried to be very open and honest from the start with all of our decision making and we've never said either that we'll get everything right or indeed that we have chosen the perfect time for any particular measure to be implemented specifically in relation to health care workers, I would say that we've been very clear for many weeks about the measures that each of us, whether you're a health care worker or not, can take at an individual level to protect yourself, PPE is obviously a crucial part of that in a health care setting.

“I know there's been a lot of concern about that in recent days, but equally I know that the HSE has been very clear in terms of the success that they've had in recent days in terms of procurement. Hopefully as a national issue it will become less relevant in coming days as those stock come into the country.

“Looking right back to two weeks ago when we introduced the first set of measures we were clear at that stage that visiting restrictions needed to go into place at nursing homes and other long term care settings, clearly we need to have more detail on the clusters both in nursing homes and elsewhere.

Dr Glynn Conitinued: “What I would say about clusters is that it can in many instances refer to a very small number of people, for example you can have a cluster in a household and if we look at the total number of clusters versus the total number of people included in those clusters, the average size of clusters so far is five or less, obviously within that there will be bigger clusters, we must get information to understand that, in terms of national or community wide issues, perhaps not as big an issue nationally.

“What will be of interest this morning is are there particular issues in particular areas that we now need to concentrate our focus on.

“It's difficult to say when the peak will be simply because we're just coming to the end of the first incubation period from when we put the restrictions in place, so really as the next week or two plays out, we should have a lot more information about the effect of the measures we put in place."

“Ultimately we know that if we hadn't put any measures in place it would have likely peaked probably within the next three to five weeks, obviously that in itself would have overwhelmed our hospital capacity or health care capacity like we've seen unfortunately in some other countries," he said.

“Clearly we'll still have a peak, what we're hoping to do is push that peak out to a later time point and to ensure that the peak never rises even close to as high as it otherwise would have.

“To give more detail on that and to give more specifics on that we need to feed data into our modelling as it emerges over the coming days and we see the effect of the restrictions.

“What we can say is that the numbers over the past four to five days have been less than what we would have predicted when we initially modelled the scenario maybe 10 days ago, it's too early to say whether those lower numbers are a result of the measures taken or if they're just effectively a bump in the road and they could still increase again significantly over the coming days.

“Whilst we have nearly 2,000 cases in modelling terms in global number terms, that's still a very low numbers, the robustness of our predictions and of our modelling, it's increasing day on day, but it is till in the early stages. I don’t want to sit here and give people a false reassurance that everything is working.”

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