Dr. Colm Henry:

It was mentioned that earlier in the phase, we saw a much higher proportion of healthcare workers affected but in recent times that has dropped. From 2 August to the end of October, out of a total of almost 36,000 Covid cases, the total number among healthcare workers was 2,000 and 39 were hospitalised. Thankfully, we have seen a significant drop off in the proportion of healthcare workers affected.

On long-term sickness, there is a growing awareness of the longer-term effects from Covid-19.

Such effects are easy to define in some cases, particularly those of people who have been quite seriously ill and have organ-specific illnesses. In many cases, however, they are less specific. This is often the case when people are recovering from a variety of viral syndromes. They have what we call "multisystem illnesses", which means they have various symptoms which are not linked to a particular body function or organ function; involve fatigue and malaise; and, in a small number of cases, cause people to be off work for a protracted period of time. We are learning from this as we go on, like other countries. Long Covid syndrome does not yet have a universal single set of definitions to which we can refer.