Ireland’s “wet pubs” are set to reopen on September 21st while just one nominated person will be permitted to visit someone in a nursing home in the capital from Sunday.
UCC professor Gerry Killeen said the Government should reconsider its plans: “When you have a growing epidemic, it’s certainly not the time to be easing restrictions.
If our vulnerable elderly people and people with underlying conditions really have to live such restricted lives I’d say maybe we’ve got our balance of priorities wrong.
“Then if you have to make priorities, if our vulnerable elderly people and people with underlying conditions really have to live such restricted lives I’d say maybe we’ve got our balance of priorities wrong.”
The decision to tighten visitor restrictions in Dublin nursing homes for three weeks comes as cases of Covid-19 have continued to rise in the capital, with more than half of yesterday’s 211 confirmed cases recorded there.
The number of infections among older people has almost doubled in recent weeks, according to the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), with 89 people aged 75 years and over contracting the disease in the past fortnight.
Prof Killeen has said restrictions similar to those of May and June are required to get the spread of the disease back under control.
“You know, if we were to get ambitious about this and want to start shrinking our epidemic again and really get it down, you are really talking about the equivalent of say, a hybrid of what was our Phase One and Phase Two.
“The alternative is the Government’s current strategy, which is to do it in a reactive manner where you implement them locally for a limited period but then of course you’ve got to relax them and then what do you do next.”
