Dr. Kirsten Schaffer:

I can answer that from two sides because, as the Deputy will probably have noticed, I am German so I know a little about what is happening there too.

As Deputy McAuliffe correctly stated, in a lot of European countries the rates have gone up in the past 14 days. This is mostly due to household parties, social gatherings and family get-togethers where people do not adhere to social distancing. That is why I think we have to be really careful as a society because for young people Covid-19 is quite an abstract term and they feel quite deprived of their social interactions. If we want buy-in from the whole of society to get through this difficult time, we really have to change our approach and become more open and transparent, because otherwise we will lose buy-in, especially from the younger generations because they have just had enough; they are tired of this. On the other side then we have the elderly and the vulnerable who are terrified. Society seems to be diverging into two directions here and that is why we really have to try to change tack a little bit to try to bring society together again. In answer to the question, as far as I can see the rising rate over the past 14 days is mostly due to gatherings, family gatherings and parties where people do not adhere to social distancing, and that is perhaps where we have to look closer at how we can deal with that.