Dr. Kevin Kelleher:

Both the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control were giving us advice at that time and we were using their advice and debates and discussions about those risks. We were also in contact with colleagues elsewhere in the world and in the UK, so we were aware of those risks, which were brought into the meetings that started at the end of January within the HSE. NPHET also began meeting at that stage and each of those meetings involved the discussions the Deputy is talking about and looking at what the risks were and what we would face. We very clearly saw the impact Covid was having in China and we took that as our main source of where we might need to go. When it came to Italy, which was the next big change, we took what was occurring there on board as well. Those influenced what we were doing. As the Deputy said, it was a new disease, so our ability to foresee what would happen was not as great as it would be today. We have much better knowledge today. We were making assessments at all those meetings, which were very frequent at two or three times a week, about what we knew, what that meant and how we had to adapt as a consequence.