Dr. Ronan Glynn:

Again, Professor Nolan may wish to come in on this issue.

We have the walk-in and pop-up approach now and that seems to be working well. We need to continue to deploy this where there are issues of concern. Increasingly, we need to give further voice to our local health colleagues on the ground. We in NPHET have become the face of this response over the past year. The people doing the actual work, and the people who really need to be thanked, are those who have been following up every case and every outbreak all across the country in departments of public health, those in the contact tracing centres and the people across all the various elements of the response. We need to facilitate and empower our local public health leaders to come forward on local radio and in local media so that people understand what is happening in their communities.

The third aspect, which reflects the earlier comments, is that time and again we have seen that the vast majority of people in Ireland understand what is going on with this disease and they understand when things are taking a turn for the worse. They listen to us when we voice our concerns. They might not want to hear the message but they listen to the message. When we say, "Look, we are seeing a signal and we have increasing concern so please pull back a little bit and please decrease your social contacts", at a population level people have responded to that time and again. That, more than anything else, is what has defined the response to this. When this is all done, that is what we should proudly look back on as a country. The way people come together in communities and in solidarity will be the key to getting us to where we need to be over the coming weeks and months.