Professor Philip Nolan:

There are two parts to that question. There is the very broad public health support for nursing homes which is not my area of expertise. Within my area of expertise, one of the things to be learned from this, and we still do not have clarity on it, is the extent to which people can transmit the disease before they have symptoms of the disease. It is perfectly reasonable in the outbreak of a new infectious disease to isolate people who have symptoms. In mid to late March it began to become a concern that people could transmit the disease before they developed symptoms. Within mine and Dr. De Gascun's area of expertise, our aim is bottoming that out and really understanding how this disease is transmitted outside those classic settings of having symptoms, shedding the virus and transmitting the disease.

As a member of NPHET, my experience was that suppression of the virus in the community as the primary means of protecting vulnerable and then specific steps to protect vulnerable people was a core concern. NPHET was looking at information from Italy, the United States of America and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, ECDC as it was coming in and working hard to make what we could of it in terms actionable outcomes.