'Don’t panic,' says virologist claiming wave of Covid-19 infections is slowing

However, he said vulnerable people are not always getting access to supports including the antiviral Paxlovid treatments. File picture

The current wave of Covid infections appears to be slowing down despite uncertainty around case numbers and the number of hospitalised Covid patients hitting its highest point since April.

It comes as the European Medicines Agency has advised expanding access to booster vaccines for those over 60, but not for younger people yet. On Monday, hospital numbers reached over one thousand to 1,004 for the first time since early April. This included 40 people needing intensive care.

However, Professor Eoghan de Barra said infectious diseases doctors around the country are not seeing extremely high numbers of severely ill patients.

Prof. de Barra, senior lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons and infectious diseases consultant at Beaumont Hospital, said: “I don’t think we need to be panicked about this. The numbers are up, but a lot of them are incidental. There are mitigation measures this time.” 

However, he said vulnerable people are not always getting access to these supports including the antiviral Paxlovid treatments. The HSE said 253 doses of this were given up to June 28, out of a delivery of 5,200.

“It’s very low. Anecdotally people who are in those risk groups are contacting us and they are not getting prescribed it,” he said.

“Certainly what myself and colleagues are seeing is a slight increase in people who are sick, they tend to be in the groups which if they’ve got this drug that reduces the risk.” 

He said if immunocompromised people are getting Covid-19 now having avoided it for two-and-a-half years, this is a further sign of how transmissible the current variant is.

“Don’t panic, follow the plan, get up to speed on all your vaccines, get Paxlovid if you are in the groups eligible,” he said.

Indeed on Monday, the EMA recommended a second booster for people aged 60 to 79, having previously recommended this only for over-80s. This is in addition to boosters for immunocompromised people of all ages.

Any decision to expand age-based access beyond over-65s in Ireland will be made by the National Immunisation Advisory Committee. A spokeswoman said they do not comment before they make a decision.

Due to the current regime of testing, it is difficult to get a wholly accurate picture of the virus prevalence in Ireland. Assistant professor of virology at University College Dublin, Dr Gerald Barry, said following reductions in testing in Ireland that a project analysing virus levels in sewerage is one of the remaining data sources.

“In terms of predicting when the wave is going to come down, probably the most accurate is the wastewater surveillance,” he said.

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“It’s an unbiased picture of how much viral RNA there is in the population. Based on the most recent data I’ve seen that would suggest the amount of viral genomes in the population is starting to plateau.” 

He said this would suggest transmission is “slowing” but added: “How long that plateau will last before it starts to move down again, I suppose only time will tell.” 

Wider use of antigen testing is needed to give people more certainty of how the summer wave will play out, he urged.

“We don’t have any kind of accurate information about how many people are infected in the country,” he said.

“There is no encouragement to use antigen testing, and that is a mistake in my opinion. Antigen testing can add to our ability to control transmission. That could be more strongly encouraged.”