The Covid-19 lead for the Irish College of General Practitioners, Dr Mary Favier, has said that the health service has operated through the pandemic with “one hand tied behind its back” without strict travel restrictions for passengers arriving into Ireland.
It had been dispiriting and demoralising for healthcare workers to see the number of people entering the country in recent weeks, some of whom travelled around and did not observe quarantine rules, she said.
This comes as 1,969 patients were being treated in hospitals with Covid-19 as of 7.30pm on Thursday, 214 of whom were in Intensive Care Units.
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show, Dr Favier said that GPs know from being on the ground that the current system with locator forms and tracing was not being used to its full extent.
Introducing mandatory quarantine was taking a sledgehammer to the problem, it could be more effective to look at ways of implementing the current system fully, she suggested.
Rigorous support for the system was required to support the passenger locator system including better use of IT and providing staff to phone and text arrivals on a daily basis to ensure they were following quarantine, she said.
We have a body of work to do.
There could be innovative uses of technology, she said, such as in other countries where it had been possible to locate arrivals to ensure they were where they said they were. In some countries house calls had been made to do that. “We have a body of work to do.”
GPs would always support additional testing as testing and tracing were the backbone of the battle against Covid-19, she said.
The HSE has done a good job so far, but it had done so with “one hand tied beside its back”.
It was a complex situation and quarantine rules were further complicated by the open border with Northern Ireland. GPs had been asking for more active cooperation between the two jurisdictions, but that would require political cooperation, she said.
There was increasing evidence that Covid-19 was likely to become endemic and that it would be necessary to approach control of the virus with an all-island approach.
Dr Favier urged the public to observe the restrictions and to stay at home.
The current vaccination rollout was dependent on supply, she said and while people needed a sense of hope, there was a need to be cautious about providing timelines.
Covid variants
World Health Organisation spokesperson Dr Margaret Harris has also warned new variants of Covid-19 which are more transmissible means the public will have to be even more stringent about reducing contacts, mask wearing, distancing, hand washing – and tracking the virus.
While the new variants do not appear to cause more severe illness, some appear to be able to spread more quickly and effectively, she told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
Each country should conduct a full risk assessment of what is going on in its communities, she said. At present Ireland had “intense, widespread transmission” so bringing in any further cases needed to be avoided at a time when the health system was “absolutely stretched.”
While vaccines prevented people from getting sick, it was not yet known if they prevented transmission of the virus, she warned.
This meant that restriction measures would need to continue. “We will know more about whether or not the vaccine protects from transmission as we follow all the people who have been vaccinated and track all the data,” explained Dr Harris.
