CMO 'scaring the bejaysus out of people' and booster drive will avoid lockdown, say ministers
Chief medical officer Tony Holohan has presented 'rock-solid' evidence that a large cohort of people are currently using antigen tests, even though they have Covid-19 symptoms, say senior Cabinet sources. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins
A combination of chief medical officer Tony Holohan “scaring the bejaysus out of people” and an acceleration of the booster campaign will spare the country from another lockdown, Cabinet ministers are hoping.
Government ministers told the they are confident the stark warnings from the National Public Health Emergency Team
(Nphet) will be sufficient to force a change in people’s behaviour.
“With Tony Holohan scaring the bejaysus out of people and the booster campaign, which has done about 560,000 people now, it is not a foregone conclusion another lockdown will happen,” said one senior minister.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly will bring a memorandum to Cabinet on Tuesday to provide for the subsidisation of antigen tests, despite strong pleas from the chief medical officer and Nphet not to do so.
Senior Cabinet sources told the that Dr Holohan has presented “rock-solid” evidence that a large cohort of people are currently using antigen tests, even though they have Covid-19 symptoms.
Mr Donnelly’s memo includes provision for a major communications to reinforce the message that antigen tests are solely for asymptomatic people planning on engaging in higher-risk activities.
While weekend reports suggested that with the subsidies, antigen tests could be as cheap as €1 or €2, senior Government sources said “they will not be that low".
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said the Cabinet will decide at its meeting on Tuesday to make the test more affordable to people.
“Are we going to use it more widely? Of course, we will. Are we going to make it more affordable, I strongly suspect we will,” he said.
Tonight’s Cabinet sub-committee on economic recovery will discuss the additional supports for the hospitality sector, most notably the night-time sector which has been furloughed again.
While there is unlikely to be a return to the higher rates of the pandemic unemployment payment, it is being suggested that there could be a delay to the planned cuts to the employment wage subsidy scheme (EWSS), due to take effect from December 1.
The Restaurants Association of Ireland has engaged with the highest levels of Government over the past 48 hours to retain the EWSS at the current level and to reintroduce the Covid recovery support scheme due to the level of contraction in hospitality as an outcome of restrictions and messaging around reducing social contacts. December is a critical month for hospitality in terms of cash flow for the quarter one of 2022.
Ministers made it clear it will have to be at least another 10 days before any conclusions can be made as to the impact of the renewed restrictions announced last week.
Further lockdowns are not inevitable, but it will require a national effort to avoid them, Mr Coveney also said. He said the country can still avoid the return of enhanced restrictions if people pull together and reduce the spread of Covid-19.
Mr Coveney was speaking as a further 4,181 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed by officials at the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.
Nphet’s head of modelling, Philip Nolan, said their data shows that antigen tests are not being used well.
He said that, of people who used an antigen test in the past week or so and were symptomatic on a positive antigen test, less than a third went on to get the confirmatory PCR tests.
