Dr. Samuel McConkey:

Unfortunately, even in the past few weeks we have been seeing some small outbreaks in nursing homes and this is exactly the problem with having Covid-19 in our community. Inevitably, as young people go in, quite rightly, to work in nursing homes and hospitals, they can be shedding SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatically for one or two days before developing symptoms. Unfortunately, the idea of keeping the sick out does not work for this and testing people every two or three days is not logistically feasible if we are talking about all the healthcare and social care staff. We must keep community rates down .

If they get up even as high as they are now in Ireland they will inevitably spread into nursing homes, causing outbreaks. This is one of the main reasons I believe we cannot live with this.

On immunity testing, we can certainly test for antibodies but there is no definite correlation yet between those antibodies and protection. In other types of coronavirus, the antibodies do not last long. After three to six months or in some cases a few years, the antibodies disappear and do not work any more. We can test for antibodies but nobody should confuse that with immunity testing. Having antibodies in the blood means that a person has been exposed to that virus or something similar in the past but it does not necessarily confer protective immunity and prevent a person from getting infected or from transmitting it to other people. Unfortunately while immunity testing would be brilliant to have, I have not seen anything yet that does that.