Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As of last night, we had 16,671 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in our country. Sadly, 769 people have so far lost their lives: people with lives and stories; people who made a contribution; people who mattered; and people who will be remembered. The Government is eternally grateful to all those working to combat Covid-19, and everyone is playing their part in this emergency, whether through their work or simply by staying home.

The good news is that we now estimate that the reproduction number of the disease is now between 0.7 and 1. More information will be provided on the modelling by Professor Philip Nolan later today. More people in Ireland have now recovered from coronavirus than have the virus, and more people have been discharged from hospital than are now in hospital as a consequence of coronavirus. This means that our collective national effort is working and that we are suppressing the disease in our communities. So far, 130 people, having recovered, have been discharged home from ICUs, and there has been no overall increase in the number of people in ICUs in recent days.

We have been battered by a wave of destruction but, as a people, we have endured. I know that all of this is coming at an enormous cost, with people suffering increased anxiety because of the restrictions, people who have lost their jobs and people who fear losing their businesses. The mission of the next Government must be to bring the same focus and energy to rebuilding our society as we have brought to facing this health crisis.

Today our new enemy is complacency. The real risk is that if we become lax in the next few days and weeks, we could lose control over the spread of the virus. So far we have not been able to slow transmission of the virus in every setting, and its impact in long-term care and residential facilities, both nursing homes and other care facilities, is great. Our most vulnerable citizens are at risk and we are now taking action to control outbreaks and minimise transmission to protect as many people as possible. This involves increased testing, now that that is possible; increased access to personal protective equipment, PPE; oxygen training; staff accommodation; and other approaches being undertaken. We are also providing financial assistance for nursing homes in order that they can better manage their response to Covid-19.

International best practice shows that an integrated strategy of rigorous sampling, testing and contact tracing is the best way of managing this crisis. Our approach in all these areas has been robust and will help us plan for when we can safely ease the public health and physical distancing measures. As of last Friday more than 105,000 tests had been processed in laboratories, including a laboratory in Germany. The National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, recommends that we should try to expand our testing capacity to approximately 100,000 tests per week. That is a significant increase but one that will be necessary as we plan to exit from the current restrictions and manage the aftermath. This is a big challenge. It might not be possible, but we will pull out all the stops to make it happen. The easing of public health measures will be gradual and will be done in a stepwise manner. It will require continuous effort by all of us to suppress and control this virus. Our easing of the restrictions will not necessarily mirror the manner in which they were escalated, and we must leave a period between taking each step so that we can monitor its impact and act if necessary. Certain stricter social distancing measures may have to be reintroduced if it looks like the spread of the incidence of the virus is increasing again. We have seen this happen, unfortunately, in Japan in recent days.

Public health criteria have been developed by the NPHET, based on the work of the World Health Organization, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the European Commission. The criteria set out are: the incidence of transmission, including in respect of outbreaks in residential and other healthcare settings; ICU occupancy as an indicator of transmission; public health capacity, that is, testing and contact tracing; and overall health system capacity, including access to healthcare workers, beds and essential products and equipment.

Extreme vigilance is required to limit the increase in new cases and to prevent more deaths. We must do everything we can to avoid a post-peak wave or a deadly second wave, which, as we know, occurred in the cases of H1N1 and during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. When this is over we will awaken our society and our economy, and the actions we take to do so must be taken in a safe, appropriate, phased and timely way. I look forward to hearing Members' observations and suggestions.

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