A Professor of Infectious Diseases has said that eliminating Covid is not achievable and that Ireland should start easing restrictions and learn to live with the virus.
Prof Jack Lambert made the call on Newstalk Breakfast as Northern Ireland scrapped some of its Covid-19 restrictions including the rule that just six people may sit together in pubs and restaurants, and an end to bubbles in school.
He told Newstalk Breakfast we have to start moving on, as eliminating the virus completely is not achievable. He also warned that the collateral damage from Covid was “huge”.
“This is going to be an annual pandemic, similar to influenza.
“Maybe we can cross our fingers and hope that this virus will just disappear, but it’s very unlikely,” the infectious diseases expert said.
“We’re in a different place then we were… in March 2020, so we need context now,” he told the programme. “We don’t need to be looking at numbers – ‘the numbers are up, the ICUs are going to become overwhelmed’ – this is the rhetoric that people have been hearing over the last 18 months.”
“It’s the wrong message: the message is how do we live safely with COVID?”
He said that there was still a risk, despite vaccination, of transmitting Covid.
“It’s not about numbers anymore, it’s about every life counts: so what can we do to save our lives – psychologically, economically – and how can we make sure we’re not putting the rest of Irish society at risk by infecting them with COVID.
“We still are going to have a risk, despite vaccination, of transmitting COVID,” he said.
Professor Lambert said that Ireland needed to ease more restrictions, and said “the collateral damage from COVID is huge”.
“We give numbers of ICU with COVID – what the numbers of ICUs with people with attempted suicides? People with all sorts of things that have happened because of COVID. We’re not taking into account those kind of things, the economic consequences,” he said.