"To be very clear to everybody in Ireland today: you need to abide by the social distancing. That means there should be 2 metres between you and other people," Minister for Health @SimonHarrisTD tells RTÉ's @MorningIreland | @rtenews #coronavirus #covid19 pic.twitter.com/gntSKKo4rF
— RTÉ (@rte) March 23, 2020
Health Minister Simon Harris speaking to Bryan Dobson on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland
This morning.
Further to repeated calls from politicians and health experts for people to maintain “social distancing” of two metres, and suggestions that further restrictions on people’s movement will be put in place on account of the coronavirus, Health Minister Simon Harris told Bryan Dobson on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland:
“We did see, over the course of this weekend see scenes of large gatherings, the one in Glendalough perhaps might have been the one that most people were talking about.
“I’m very pleased that the council stepped in there and said ‘look, we can’t properly socially distance here, we’re shutting down the car park, we’re shutting down the food premises. That’s the sort of decisive action that needs to be taken…
“To be very clear to everybody in Ireland today, you need to abide by the social distancing, that means there should be two metres between you and other people.
“If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be operating. Tomorrow the National Public Health Emergency team will meet. We’ve been very clear, myself and the Taoiseach, we won’t be making decisions based on kind of Twitter trends or political populism, we’ll follow the public health advice.
“Tomorrow Tony Holohon’s team will consider if there are further recommendations to be made to Government and I quite frankly expect that it’s likely we’re going to be receiving further recommendations from them…
“…we know that the two metres needs to be abided by and perhaps we know that there are some places where that hasn’t been possible to happen. So perhaps greater guidance in relation to playgrounds and public spaces could be useful as well and perhaps greater supports and guidance for businesses too…”
Meanwhile…
Alternatively…
Paul Cullen, in today’s The Irish Times, reports that 40,000 people across Ireland are waiting for a coronavirus test.
Mr Cullen reports:
The HSE is now acknowledging people are waiting an average of four to five days to get tested; add in at least another two days for the swabbed sample to be processed and results reported back to the patients, and that gives an average delay of a week.
This is bad news for a system allegedly following the World Health Organisation advice to “test, test, test”. It is also of concern that it has taken so long for the system to admit to the delays, after journalists were last week being fobbed off with non-specific answers to their questions.
…The real problem is that the delays in testing are causing knock-on delays in contact tracing, the other essential element in the two-pronged approach used by Asian countries to successfully tackle their epidemics.
…The weekend has been dominated by discourse about a minority of people not observing social distancing rules. In reality, we are more likely to need a lockdown as a result of misfiring testing and contract tracing systems than because people chose to take walks on beaches and in parks.
Coronavirus: Delays in testing and tracing are the real problem (Paul Cullen, The Irish Times)
no pubs no cinemas no shopping centres….no parks no beaches …no hope
Idiots all
“add in at least another two days for the swabbed sample to be processed and results reported back to the patients”
I know an individual who has been waiting 6 days now for results.
Our health communicators are not bring honest. They tell us 24 000 people responded to offers to help HSE. In the UK the same call with 12 times the population numbers got 4500. I smell a rat
Why?
Ireland is on the ball. The HSE have a dedicated website that I found on page one with my first Google search: (https://hbsrecruitmentservices.ie/)
The NHS either doesn’t have something similar that I can find (I tried a few searches and gave up).
Listening to that, Harris seems to think that social distancing is the only thing to consider. this section of the interview was full of repetition of the word ‘perhaps’, and all in relation to social distancing.
What is the actual situation as regards the arrival of……
Supply of PPE equipment?
Supply of testing kits?
Ability to perform the tests in a short time period?
Availability of ICU beds?
………without the waffle?
All of those things are with the HSE – and it would be good to get them answered.
However, the most important thing at the moment is to “flatten the curve” – to keep the numbers getting infected to a minimum so there isn’t as much pressure on the health services. And that is something that the radio listeners can do – hence the repetition.
This explains it well: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
“However, the most important thing at the moment is to “flatten the curve” – to keep the numbers getting infected to a minimum so there isn’t as much pressure on the health services”
That was the most important thing to do weeks ago Cian. Learning from Italy was one of the most important things to do – again, weeks ago.
It took private decisions (like Youghal’s cancellation) to highlight the danger that St. Patrick’s Day parades held for this. It took the HSE (Honohan) how long to decide to cancel the Dublin one afterwards?
There’s a constant referring to ‘taking advice from Health Professionals’ by Harris and Varadkar. The WHO has been flagging measures (movement of people for instance) needed for some time now. This one, for instance, https://www.thejournal.ie/coronavirus-world-health-orgnaisation-5054314-Mar2020/
Could the WHO be considered a source of professional advice?
Now here’s a worrying statement from that link ‘If we don’t put in place the strong measures, the strong public health measures now, when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted the danger is that disease will jump back up.’
There is a Chinese proverb that is relevant – “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now”.
Yes, we need to increase our testing capability, that seems to be an issue.
I don’t know what the capacity was like 2 months ago, or 2 weeks ago or today – Do you?
If we still have the same capacity – they you are 100% right and they are failing us.
Poor attempt at deflection. In case you missed it – your mates, Varadkar, Harris and Honahan (if they’d any cop on of course) would have seen what was happening in Italy weeks ago, would take the WHO’s advice – current and previous, and acted in the health interests of this country’s population accordingly and quickly. They didn’t.
Photo-ops are still order of the day. Addressing the nation with an Enda Kenny – type speech laced with phrases lifted from others, trying to create a perception of statesmanship, and fluffy diversionary answers seem to be order of the day. What are they doing with the likes of Concannon? (No need to answer that – we know)
And all the time, Varadkar and Martin conniving to foist another 4 years of their government upon us. Brexit-19 eh?
Current figures being released every night on this basis are useless.