Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome this opportunity once again to update this House on the Covid-19 disease and our national response to it. First and foremost, I wish to express my sympathy to the families and friends of those who have been lost to this disease since I was last in this House. Our thoughts are with each and every one of them at this very difficult time.

Last Friday, we decided as a Government that we could proceed with phase 2 of our roadmap and we could also bring in some additional measures. As always, our decision was informed by the data on the status of the Covid-19 disease in our country and by the public health advice that we received from the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET. As part of this phase we can now meet in our homes in groups of up to six people and we can strengthen again the private bonds that hold our society together. A maximum of 15 people can now meet outdoors for organised sporting, cultural and social events and through this we can begin, with caution and care, to rebuild the public life of our country.

The number of people who can attend funerals and cremation ceremonies has been increased to 25. This is an important issue which many colleagues in this House raised with me. The inability of friends and sometimes of family to be able to stand with those most directly bereaved at a funeral or cremation service has been one of the most difficult and painful aspects of this pandemic. Our communities found thoughtful ways to show their support and solidarity to those who were mourning despite the limits and it is our hope that the extra number of people who can now attend these services will provide further comfort at such a sad time.

Clearly, we have now moved as a country from a message of stay home to stay local, which means that we are asking people to remain within 20 km of their home or within their county boundary. We are able to make this change because our collective actions as a country have managed to suppress this virus. However, we absolutely must remain cautious and continue to restrict our movements as much as possible so we do not lose the hard-won progress we have made.

I would like to update the House today, as I do every week, about the R-nought. I have been advised by the chair of the modelling group, Professor Phillip Nolan, that the R-nought is estimated to be between 0.4 and 0.8. I am told by Professor Nolan that we can be confident it remains below 1 this week. I am also very encouragingly told that there is no evidence that it is increasing or decreasing, but it is staying remarkably stable. Again this is a testament to the huge efforts of people in this country.

We have also continued to see a reduction in the number of patients with Covid-19 in hospitals, with a welcome fall to just 75 people in Irish hospitals today with Covid-19 confirmed in the latest published numbers and 29 people in our intensive care units. Of course, I am conscious that when we quote numbers that behind each of them is a patient, a person, a loved one, and we send each and every one of them our best wishes, particularly those in the ICUs fighting for their lives. We look forward to more people being successfully and safely discharged from our intensive care units. This is a trend we have to maintain. I suggest that there are six key ways in which we can all help to do that during this new phase.

The first of these concerns close contacts. We are obviously able to meet more people again and this is great. It is something we have worked very hard for. We have missed people, missed family, and missed friends, but there is a responsibility on every single one of us to minimise the number of close contacts we meet. Now is not the time for people to be increasing their social circles. It is not the time for people to be meeting their second cousin once removed. Now is the time to consider who are core contacts one has really missed in one's life, the couple of key family members or close friends. They are the people I am going to see. I am not going to see people beyond that socially in phase 2. I am also asking people to keep a list of those they have met for contact tracing purposes. If, God forbid, a person gets Covid he or she should have a list, jotted down as a note or put in his or her phone of the people he or she met that day so that we can very quickly contact trace anybody who he or she have come in contact with.

The second point I want to make is that outdoors is better than indoors. While the guidelines now provide for indoor visits and with Irish weather that is perfectly understandably and possibly necessary, I want to encourage people to remember that meeting outdoors entails less risk and is a better choice. Even if people are meeting indoors, meeting in a well-ventilated area does lessen one's risk as well.

My third point is about self-isolation, and it is a really important point. Irish people, as we heard Dr. Cillian De Gascun say in the Special Committee on the Covid-19 Response earlier in the week, are really good for going to work when they are sick. People get up in the morning, they have a temperature and a bit of a headache, they take two paracetamol and off they go for the day. We need that habit to stop. If a person feels sick we need him or her to immediately self-isolate if he or she has any of the symptoms of Covid-19. People should not put it off, they should not wait and should not hesitate to contact their GP. We have seen - and this is one of the concerning trends in the last week - a growing number of household clusters and that is concerning. They are small numbers so far. I think it was six one week and 16 in the past week, but that makes the advice on self-isolation even more important. We do not want a man or woman in a house to feel sick, to delay self-isolating within the house, and then by the time he or she contacts the GP, all of a sudden two or three people in the home have Covid-19, so the self-isolation advice is very important.

The fourth piece of advice relates to the 2 m distance. As we begin to move around a little bit more the importance of social distancing remains high - in fact, it is more important than ever. The Special Committee on the Covid-19 Response heard today from the World Health Organization and the message is clear that social distancing and staying apart saves lives. People can have the debate about 1 m versus 2 m until the cows come home, the reality is that 2 m is safer than 1 m, and the public health advice is 2 m. I ask people to keep that 2 m distance in their social engagements to help save lives. Continuing to control this aspect of our personal behaviour will be essential to controlling the behaviour of the virus.

My fifth message is to stay local. Thankfully, we are now seeing a number of counties in Ireland which have not had a confirmed case of Covid-19 in quite a few days. Deputy Feighan may speak later to remind us about County Sligo. I think it is a county that has not had a case of Covid in three weeks. There are others beginning to get there. I think County Kerry may not have had one in three weeks as well. I am going from memory, but there are a couple of counties that have not seen a case in three weeks. There are some which have not seen a case in two weeks, and there is a number that have not seen one in a week. This is good and this is real progress, but it is so important that we use phase 2 to continue to weaken the grip of the virus, and we are asking people to stay local, stay within their own county, to limit the potential for the virus to spread or reseed across our country.

The sixth point I want to make is on face coverings and I want to be crystal clear on this.

From a public health point of view, the clear public health advice is that they should be worn on public transport and in enclosed indoor spaces, such as shops. We will be launching a further public awareness campaign on this very shortly.

People asked me whether we are going to change the law in this regard. We do not have plans to change it. We did not change it, however, to say people needed to cough into their elbow; we just got used to it. We did not change the law to say we should wash our hands for 20 seconds but we got really good at it. We have not even changed the laws in regard to the 2 m restriction on occasion. Therefore, this is about behavioural change. I accept that the evidence, and maybe even the messaging on this, has changed over time. Perhaps it has been confusing for people and has not got through in the clear way it needs to. Let us be very clear, therefore, that starting from today, face coverings are recommended. People should wear one on public transport and in shops and other enclosed areas unless they have a medical reason not to do so or are under the age of 13. That is an important message. We all need to come together and the Government has a big role to play in a public awareness campaign on this.

My final point is on hand-washing and cough etiquette. People are more than familiar with these. We have got really good at these but it cannot be said often enough that, in phase 2, they will be among the most important behaviours we can embrace to protect ourselves. The virus can live on our hands but if we wash them regularly and frequently, it makes it much harder for it to survive. These are the simple, basic, important things we can all do to stay safe while we try so hard to find a balance, the sweet spot, or a way of living safely alongside the virus. While we are working to get the numbers down and have a reproduction rate as close to zero as possible, and while the virus is still here, we have to try to get back to some degree of normality. That requires us all to work out a way to live safely alongside it.

We have all been particularly mindful of the impact of this pandemic on both children and older people during the earlier phases of the response. It is very welcome that NPHET was, I hope, able to recommend measures to make life a little better and easier for those two groups.

The protection and well-being of those in our nursing homes continues to be my priority. For that reason, I am particularly pleased our success in pushing back this disease has allowed us to bring forward, to 15 June, the phased resumption of indoor visiting at residential care facilities. This has to be done safely. Normal nursing home visiting is not resuming next week, and I know nursing home owners would want me to say that. What we are trying to do is determine whether we can, on compassionate grounds and understanding that people are lonely, allow a degree of visiting. It has to be done safely and in alignment with the guidance. As I said to a nursing home owner, I would much rather be standing here defending the individual for not allowing a visit next week than explaining why a cluster was allowed to develop in his or her nursing home again. Therefore, we need to proceed with caution. I fully get that people are dying to see their loved ones, but we have got to get this right.

Planning for the delivery of non-Covid care is well-advanced. The HSE CEO has confirmed to me that a framework document will be published next week. The reintroduction of services will be across acute hospital and community settings and planned for the reality where we have to treat both Covid and non-Covid patients simultaneously in a context of heightened safety measures and reduced capacity.

I know colleagues in this House have been particularly concerned about the restart of screening services, as have I, and I am pleased the HSE has confirmed that there will be restart dates for each of the four programmes by the end of June. We are making great progress and we should all be proud of the collective contribution every citizen has made but we must continue to be cautious.

On 5 June, the director general of the World Health Organization said that for countries that have seen reductions in the level of disease, the biggest threat is now complacency. As much as we would wish it, we cannot now decide we have done our bit and the threat is gone. As a country, we have suppressed the virus because of the willingness of the majority of our population to change their everyday behaviour and maintain the change. That remains our massive ongoing challenge.

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