Ireland ‘no better prepared’ for next pandemic, experts warn six years on from covid

Gaps in nursing home care, in particular, remain despite the tragically high toll among residents. Picture: iStock

Ireland is no better prepared for a new pandemic than it was before the covid-19 pandemic, a specialist forum held by the covid-19 Evaluation heard on Tuesday.

Gaps in nursing home care, in particular, remain despite the tragically high toll among residents.

Mary Codd, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at University College Dublin, focused on this issue.

She described infection control training as “seriously missing or substandard” in the sector.

She referenced a survey she work on with 400 staff in 2020 which revealed “less than 50% of our long-term residential care facilities had training in infection prevention control prior to the pandemic".

She said mortality levels among over-70s living in nursing homes was 21 times higher than among the same age-group cocooning at home.

Some 60% of those who died in wave 1 were in nursing homes even though this group is equal to only 5% of the population, she added.

Now six years later, she said: “We have not addressed adequately the residential care facilities factors. We have not addressed occupancy, staffing, renumeration, rotation, training, infection prevention control (though it has improved), and isolation facilities, oversight and regulation.

“Those are lessons that have been learned that we need to act on.”

Professor Ivan Perry, of the School of Public Health at University College Cork, focused on how Northern Ireland and Ireland cooperated.

“We lacked political and institutional structures needed for a coordinated all-island pandemic response, something that must be prioritised before the next pandemic,” he urged.

He also pointed out how separate Irish health structures still are, noting that, for example, Cork city hosts five key units but they are all in separate locations.

Care for children was another common theme, with a number of speakers questioning the long lockdowns in schools and the ongoing mental health issues for many.

Evaluation chair Professor Anne Scott noted concerns around a lack of readiness in many areas.

“I think at the heart of it is a clear acceptance that people were trying to do their best in quite difficult circumstances,” she said.

“We can certainly learn from the lack of preparation. I think there’s widespread agreement ‘we were not prepared’.” 

She urged: “We should not find ourselves in that situation in the future.

“And given that a number of people are flagging’ we are here six years down the line and probably no better prepared than we were in 2020’ we’ve got to wake up and move fairly quickly on this, fairly seriously, to implement those recommendations including those around public health reform, public health structures in the country that we already have.” 

She added: “We don’t have to wait for another report, we actually have the information and the recommendations here.”