More support needed for outdoor dining as data reveals low transmission rate, says expert

Of the 232,164 cases of Covid-19 recorded in the State up to March 24 this year, 262 were as a result of outdoor transmission, representing 0.1% of the total. Picture: Larry Cummins

A professor of immunovirology at University College Cork has called for better financial supports for the hospitality sector so Ireland could become an outdoor dining society.

Professor Liam Fanning told Newstalk Breakfast that he had been surprised by data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) which indicated that there had been just one confirmed case of Covid-19 in every thousand had been traced to outdoor transmission.

Of the 232,164 cases of Covid-19 recorded in the State up to March 24 this year, 262 were as a result of outdoor transmission, representing 0.1% of the total.

Prof Fanning said that while there was an obvious difference between indoor and outdoor transmission, he thought there could be a slight bias in the data and that the figures were on the lower limit.

He said: "I'm surprised at the data just a little bit.

"The focus of public health data surveillance is really to capture infections associated with outbreaks. As we know most have occurred through indoor transmission, so there's probably a slight bias in the data.

"Now there's definitely a difference between outdoor activity and infection and indoor activity and infection. The 0.1% is probably the lower limit of what it could go to and I imagine it's somewhere between that and 1%."

There were 42 outbreaks associated with outdoor gatherings, with one community outbreak accounting for seven cases, according to the data from the HPSC.

Prof Fanning added: "If this data was robust enough, it would be one in a thousand. It's probably a little less than that."

However, he said that financial supports to encourage outdoor dining should be “much higher” so that Ireland could become an outdoor dining society.

Prof Fanning said: "The financial supports that have been mooted are relatively small, around 17 million, it should be an awful lot larger than that.

"We're going to have to be going for the next season, if not the next two seasons to become an outdoor dining society."

Prof Fanning also warned that face to face outdoor meetings still had a risk, as “face on face chatting” meant that if a person was infectious they could still spread the virus.

Meanwhile, CEO of the Restaurants Association Adrian Cummins says the data raises the question of whether outdoor dining could resume sooner than anticipated.

Mr Cummins said: "Obviously, we can see once you have fine weather a lot of people are sitting out, enjoying themselves.

"I think what we need to do is have a conversation about this, how we start to reopen society and reopen the economy."