Dr. Samuel McConkey:

I think that is certainly circulating widely on social media and also has been out there, so that is certainly part of the media message, but I accept that I personally have not been pushing it.

On the area of transmission in nursing homes, I would add that while our nursing homes in Ireland have mostly single rooms except for married couples, unfortunately many of our hospitals in Ireland are all on six-bedded rooms and it is phenomenally difficult to prevent staff who are caring for people in a six-bedded room from caring for two people in beds beside each other. I am sorry to say our hospital infrastructure in Ireland is not fit for purpose for a pandemic of a respiratory virus with droplet, airborne transmission because many of the beds are within 2 m of each other. There is plenty we can do to prevent spread in nursing homes but that will not work in hospitals.