‘None of us are over the worst of it’ - GP

Every part of the country may experience COVID-19 outbreaks in the coming mouths as the government attempts to strike the balance between public health and economic disaster a local GP has claimed.

“It’s impossible to predict what will happen next,” Cavan GP Niall Collins says of the current situation. “The lockdown in Kildare, while strict and tough for the people there to deal with in those parts, is not a very strict lockdown. It’s nothing like the one we had at the end of March. It would be surprising if that ‘lockdown’ worked, because it is not incredibly strict.”

Cavan was particularly affected in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis when the virus hit. To date, there have been 882 confirmed cases of the virus in County Cavan. That figure is valid as of August 15, the latest date for which a county by county breakdown is publicly available.

Though many counties saw an upswing in numbers early this week, there were no new Coronavirus related deaths reported to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) on Monday.

However, there were 56 new cases of COVID-19 reported as of midnight, Sunday, August 17, including at least one in County Monaghan. With three countries in extended lockdown, businesses across Ireland are looking on anxiously to ascertain if their county will be next to have further restrictions imposed.

Dr Collins is conscious that at this stage of the game there are other considerations: “From a health perspective it’s not ideal, but the economy will die if they do that [a full lockdown], so they are looking for a halfway house. We have to keep in mind that they have to keep the economy running.”

He said those economic considerations are necessary to fund a health service that is coping with a lack of financial support: “If we had really robust testing and tracing service that tracked down every contact within 24 hours, then we could control outbreaks. The theory is to get it down to a low level, which we did, then when clusters happen a really good test and trace system could contain the spread. The problem is that there’s not a good enough test and trace policy in place, but you can’t really blame them.”

Hopes that the early level of infection in this county may provide a herd immunity may not have a sound medical basis: “As a rule none of us are over the worst of it. They never figured out why Cavan was top of the class, in a bad way, in terms of infections. There is no really good reason why the numbers were higher than other parts of the country.

“It will come to every part of the country at certain points. Every part of the country will be affected in the way that Kildare is affected at the moment.”