Dr. Colm Henry:

I would echo that point exactly. It is not just the positivity rate but the pressures on hospitals. What we are trying to do by suppressing the curve is to not just prevent illness and death but also to avoid the healthcare system becoming overwhelmed. We know that the natural history of this virus is to transmit freely in a much more contagious way than influenza and overwhelm healthcare systems when unchecked. On the Deputy's point about the 3%, the particular risk with community transmission is that when it gets to a very high, unmitigated level, the most robust defences in nursing homes or hospitals will not withstand that level of community transmission because of the multiple potential points of entry into a residential facility or hospital. On schools, we know from the European Centre for Disease Control, ECDC, guidance of 8 August which was based on evidence largely from Denmark and other countries that schools represent little threat to the community. It is the other way around, high levels of community transmission - in this case one measure might be the positivity rate of testing - represent a greater risk to schools remaining open than schools being open represents to the community.