There’s one action that would help to speed up the chances of successfully defeating the Covid-19 virus in Ireland. Arlene Foster should stop channelling Boris Johnson.
He makes a bumbling, waffling statement, waving his arms at experts flanking him who try to convey a sensible version of some new measure he’s proposing. Shortly afterwards Foster announces similar measures for here. Talk about being behind the curve.
Is there any chance anyone in the shallow pool of talent available at Stormont would step back and ask why Britain is not following the practices advocated by the World Health Organisation? We know why they’re not following what the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says; that’s because of Brexit, another Foster masterpiece.
Dr Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergency expert says that apart from lockdown, the main weapon is testing and contact tracing to isolate those contacts. He says if that doesn’t happen, ‘the danger is the disease will jump back up again.’ Ryan points out that China, Singapore and South Korea have provided a model for Europe. However, Britain isn’t following it.
Last week, our health minister told BBC that there are more cases in the Republic than here. Well, there should be since the population in the south is three times ours. However, the truth is that no one has any idea of how many cases there are here. The only fact we know for certain is the number of deaths; the figure for infected is only confirmed cases in hospital so the real figure is several times that figure. Johnson’s government abandoned community testing so, although they’re talking of ‘ramping up’ testing, it’s too late now for a tracing policy. Here, the total number of tests is under 3,000.
In the south, testing is still too slow and there’s too long a wait for results to enable them to isolate contacts, but they’re getting there. They have tested 13,000. They now have 41 testing sites including a naval ship moored in Dublin. They’re doing 1,000 tests a day at Páirc Uí Chaoimh and overall plan to do 4,500 a day with 40,000 test kits being distributed. They have 100,000 kits a week ordered from China. Here, do we even know if NHS staff are infected? On Monday Pat Cullen, the RCN Director, yet again appealed for testing of nurses.
By contrast Johnson’s confused approach, wasting valuable time initially pursuing a catastrophic ‘herd immunity’ policy – later denied, but they did say it – left the British government, and their compliant admirers here in the person of the first minister and education and health ministers, catching up with the public. Schools were closing before Johnson (and Foster) made a blanket decision. Sport gave up on public events, the GAA closed down, football ended its season, churches adopted social distancing; all before the British government which has played catch-up since the outset.
Why does the executive have to wait for Johnson’s bewildered Cabinet before taking any decision on anything? When they talk about ‘ramping up’ testing (at last) what do they mean? What is their target number per day? How many test sites will there be? When will they start testing NHS staff? Will they ever contemplate getting ahead of Johnson and following WHO guidelines, copying successful places like in the Far East?
Perhaps more importantly, can the south successfully crush Covid-19 while the north is pursuing tactics which could prolong the pandemic or risk it popping up again? To quote Dr Gabriel Scally, public health and epidemiology expert
: ‘I am extraordinarily worried about the UK's position…there is a problem for the island as a whole if the north continues to take the misguided and mistaken UK approach, because I think that is deeply flawed’.
There’s a precedent. The last time Foster trusted Johnson ended well, didn’t it?
