By Vivienne Clarke
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) special envoy on Covid-19, Dr David Nabarro has warned that there is going to be “a lot of sickness and death in Ireland in the next two months” if people are not careful.
Dr Nabarro said there was a middle path between a complete lockdown and the easing of restrictions. A national lockdown should only be considered when the figures were “very bad”.
While he “hated second-guessing governments”, he said that if he was sitting next to the chief medical officer and chatting about the situation, he would suggest that the focus should be on everyone adhering to the preventative measures.
Dr Nabarro also said that he did not like fines (for non-compliance to regulations), he said he preferred people to choose to do the right thing, “that's how to get things moving. We’ve got to deal with this because we want to".
Financial support
A robust system to test, trace and isolate needed to be in place for every county so that outbreaks could be identified and dealt with as they arose, he said. There also needed to be a system of financial supports so people did not fear losing money if they did not go to work because they were sick.
Not moving from Level 3 to Level 5 was risky, he said. It would be a month to six weeks before it would be known if that had been the “right pathway.”
Dr Nabarro pointed out that there has been a real build-up of the virus in other parts of Europe, there was no reason to believe that Ireland was going to escape.
“If you're going to stay at Level 3 then please do everything to stop the spread of the virus,” he urged.
