SECOND WAVE FEARS
PROFESSOR Philip Nolan has warned that Ireland could be set back to where we were in March by June if the public behaves in an “unsafe manner”.
The President of NUI Maynooth and Chair of the NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (IEMAG), has mentioned that the Republic dangers seeing a second wave in Covid-19 instances if folks don’t proceed to observe social distancing behaviours.
The professor mentioned: “The ultimate factor I need to discuss primarily based on the mannequin is what’s the danger of a second wave.
“What we do know is that regardless that Covid-19 has impacted many lives and lots of households, fewer than 5 per cent of the inhabitants, in all probability as little as 1 per cent of the inhabitants – zero prevalence research will present however proper now we estimate a really low proportion of the inhabitants has been uncovered to this virus.
“Which means there isn’t any immunity on the market so if the virus begins to transmit once more within the inhabitants, the virus will transmit freely.
“If you happen to take a look at what would occur, if the copy quantity begins to extend from the 18 of March, if it will increase to 1.2, you may see a really gradual however inexorable improve within the variety of instances.
“We might be again the place we had been by late June, early July, at 4, 5, 600 instances per day.
“If the variety of contacts between folks will increase or if we behave in an unsafe method and copy quantity goes as much as 1.6, then we’ll see the variety of instances rise extra sharply.
“If R rose to 1.8, we would get a fair sharper improve as much as about 800 new instances per day, which once more would require very sturdy public well being measures to deliver R again all the way down to .5 and produce the illness again underneath management.”
— to www.thesun.ie