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A professor of genetics has warned that there is every possibility of a resurge in Covid-19 and that Ireland could be facing waves of infection and waves of lockdown.

Professor David McConnell of Trinity College, Dublin called for a vigorous, centralised testing system on a massive scale similar to that employed in South Korea.

Speaking on RT radios Today with Sarah McInerney show he said: People think we're out of the woods, it's really quite dangerous. Today we are in the same position as we were on 12th March. What happened on that date - we went into an epidemic. Everything is there for us to resurge to have an equally vigorous epidemic. We could have waves of infection, waves of lockdown.

Prof McDonnell said that the authorities in Ireland should not be happy with what they have done to date.

They say that they have the capacity for 15,000 tests a day, they say they're only using 5,000 - I think there's something quite strange going on. One of the most remarkable things is we don't have a strongly organised, highly centralised, very effective, very fast tracing system or testing system.

We have a distributed system - essentially people in ordinary hospital labs have been repurposed and reassigned to work on the coronavirus testing, this is not what the Koreans had, they had this massive highly centralised, dedicated system, focused on coronavirus.

Our's is adequate for what it is being used for, but it is a very, very weakly organised system, such that it cannot be applied to other major tasks which I suggest it should be applied to.

Prof. McDonnell said he would suggest three measures first the introduction of a really vigorous test and tracing system where contacts could be tracked and traced within a day this would eliminate community-based cases, he said.

Secondly, assuming there was a well-managed system in place then there should be testing of all incoming visitors at all ports. We should have the ability to test all people coming into the country.

His third suggestion was, if there was a large capacity testing system in place then all educational and care facilities (including creches, schools and universities) could reopen if all teachers, carers and children are tested.

There was nothing in place at present he said to even consider this. If we had decided months ago, which we didn't, that we would generate a terrifically powerful testing system, today we would have been able to imagine re opening schools, easily, by September.

You'd do it in stages and you'd have a capacity which would allow you to open the schools and they would be opened under normal circumstances - no question of half of the children in a class coming in the morning, half in the afternoon, and so on.

Prof. McDonnell said that such a system could be in place by September, but it would take a massive administrative policy decision such as establishing a new testing and tracing agency which would be located on a single site, such as IDA factory.

The cost will be a very small price to pay if the prize at the end is the reopening of our economy on a normal basis.

We are running up expenses at the moment of billions of euros - the cost of a massive testing agency set up very quickly would be miniscule, a fraction of the cost which we are bearing at the present time and are likely to continue as our society and economy stutter along into the foreseeable future until a vaccine becomes available and is massively deployed around the country.

My own worry is that each time we introduce a relaxation there will be a minor, or maybe a major surge of the virus and the reaction of our authorities will be to reimpose stricter lockdown regulations, so we'll go up and down, up and down and it will be very frustrating, schools will not be reopening on a normal basis which is a terrible imposition on children and their parents.

Imagine the disappointment in September when we don't have ordinary care facilities open, ordinary creches, ordinary schools, we've put up with it until now, the incredible weather has helped, we've been stoic, people have been absolutely wonderful.

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'We could have waves of infection, waves of lockdown' says professor of genetics - Irish Examiner

This entry was posted on June 9, 2020 at 9:42 am and is filed under Genetics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |