Dr. Ronan Glynn:

There is unquestionably more activity than there was last March and April. One of the challenges in this is that much of the messaging has not changed because the basic premise of the messaging has not changed. The underlying issue has not changed, namely, that this virus is dangerous and the way to stop transmission is to get people not to come into contact with one another.

We have a behavioural subgroup which does fantastic work behind the scenes. NPHET expects to receive a paper from it next week, specifically looking at how to sustain the high levels of compliance we have seen over recent weeks. One key thing the subgroup tells us is that we need to be careful about overemphasising the small minority of people who are not adhering. I take the Deputy's point that there is more activity on the roads but we can see from the close contacts that average confirmed cases have that the vast majority of people are complying to the greatest extent possible.

The natural reproduction number of the virus is probably between three and four. Approximately 60% of cases in the country are probably related to the so-called UK variant, B117, which is more highly transmissible. Despite that, we have managed to get down to a reproduction number which was estimated by Professor Nolan yesterday evening as being between 0.5 and 0.9. A key part of what we need people to understand is that they are not alone in doing the right thing. There are outliers and people who are not following the guidance but the vast majority of people in the country are still listening to the basic messages. It is incredibly difficult for them but they are sticking with it. Hopefully they will stick with it in a year that will be much quieter than last year, although unfortunately there can be no guarantees about that.