Additional measures may be required to stem Covid-19 surge – CMO

Additional measures, on top of Level 5 restrictions, may be needed, Dr Holohan said in the Nphet letter.

Additional measures may be required to stem the current surge in Covid-19 infections, the Chief Medical Officer has warned.

In a letter from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) to government on Wednesday, Dr Tony Holohan warned that the Covid-19 situation was deteriorating “very substantially” and infection rates were at their “most concerning” since the onset of the pandemic ten months ago.

Infection rates, he said, were rising in all age groups, especially in the 19-24 age group and a greater number of people aged over 65 years were falling ill – 10% of all new infections.

“The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in hospital is rapidly increasing, the number of Covid-19 cases in intensive care may be starting to increase and, while deaths per day are static at this time, they are likely to increase very soon in line with an expected lag effect,” the CMO said in the letter to government on December 30.

The virus was spreading at a rate of 7-10% per day with infection rates doubling in seven to ten days, Nphet outlined.

The reproductive number was now estimated to be between 1.6–1.8 - the “highest level” since R estimates began.

Dr Holohan said that modelling projections suggested that even if the R number was reduced to less than 1.0 it may not be enough to contain the virus.

An R number of 0.9 from this week onwards would see the number of cases peak at around 1,800 cases per day in early January and fall to 1,200 cases per day by the end of January, while the number of people in hospital could reach 700 by the middle of January.

“It is unlikely that significant suppression will be achieved in so short a time frame, so actual case numbers are likely to exceed these latter projections,” the Nphet letter warned.

“The situation remains extremely fragile, with disease incidence and hospitalisations accelerating faster than the most pessimistic modelling scenarios had projected,” the letter continued.

Nphet said it was of the view that “the current set of measures will not be sufficient to interrupt transmission patterns to the extent necessary”.

Additional measures, on top of Level 5 restrictions, may be needed, Dr Holohan said in the Nphet letter: “Additional measures may be required if there is a continued deterioration over the coming period.”