'Stronger suppression' needed to avoid a fifth Covid-19 wave

UCC professor Ivan Perry urged the National Public Health Emergency Team to share its Covid-19 modelling data with the wider scientific community.

Ireland could face a fifth wave of Covid-19 by August unless the Government adopts a “stronger suppression” strategy, a webinar hosted by the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group (ISAG) has heard.

TCD scientist Dr Tomás Ryan said the current Government strategy was doing everything “half-heartedly” and that more effective lockdown measures were required to contain the current Covid-19 wave and prevent further waves into the future.

Dr Ryan was among several speakers who urged Government to tighten up on mandatory quarantine for all travellers and invest more resources in public health while vaccines are being rolled out.

The seminar heard that some countries like Chile had vaccinated 20% of their population but were still experiencing high infection rates.

“Even with successful vaccination over the next eight weeks, that doesn’t completely remove the risk of that fourth wave or the damage that the tail of that fourth wave will do,” Dr Ryan said.

“And the exposure to a fifth wave, a fifth wave either being caused by the Brazilian P1 variant or another variant or a fifth wave caused by another cycle of lockdown and restrictions because we won’t have significant vaccination to protect us from a fifth wave before August,” he added.

UCC professor Ivan Perry urged the National Public Health Emergency Team to share its Covid-19 modelling data with the wider scientific community and also noted that the Government was “selective” in the science that it followed.

Public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally said it was “scandalous” that, a year into the pandemic, public health departments were still not resourced to the required level.