Dr. Daniel McCartney:

We have not had any formal interaction with NPHET, although we know there are people on the team who are conversant with and understand the area of vitamin D. That is well worth pursuing to see if we can get better interaction there, particularly on messaging. While direct provision of vitamin D among the population might happen in due course, these supplements are very cheap and readily available. If the public get a clear message that they should be supplementing at X dose in the current context, they would follow up on that.

I will talk a little about Finland.

Certainly they have done very well on food fortification and supplementation. We have seen the effect of this in terms of population with low vitamin D levels. We know Finland has got many other things right in terms of public health policies and health protection. I do not think it is any coincidence that Finland has shown not just the lowest mortality rates for Covid-19 throughout Europe but also some of the lowest incidence rates. They are quite considerably lower than most other countries. This is a country to follow if we can but we are some way off food fortification. It is not something that will be done this month or this year as it is something that takes a long time to do, so supplementation is the answer. This goes into the next question on whether fortification or supplementation is required. At current levels of fortification, which Professor Walsh spoke about in answering the previous question, we cannot reach sufficient levels of vitamin D intake to reach optimum blood levels for immune health.