Ireland has the highest Covid-19 rate in the world. How did it go so badly?

© Brian Lawless / AP
Paramedics and paramedics at Mater Hospital in Dublin

When Ireland emerged from a strict six-week lockdown in December, it had one of the lowest levels of Covid-19 cases in Europe. Since then, the situation has changed dramatically.

The country recorded the highest infection rate in the world last week, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication based at the University of Oxford.

In the seven days leading up to January 10, Ireland reported around 1,323 cases of Covid-19 per million population, according to statistics, more than any other country during the same period.

On Friday, it recorded the largest daily increase in infections since the start of the pandemic with 8,248 new cases, according to a statement from the Irish Department of Health.

“The alarming level of the disease is unprecedented in terms of our experience of Covid-19 levels in the community,” warned Professor Philip Nolan, a member of the Irish National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET). “We are seeing numbers of cases per day, and numbers in the hospital, that we just couldn’t have figured out before Christmas.”

© Artur Widak / NurPhoto / Getty Images
People walk down Grafton Street in Dublin city center on January 6 after the lockdown measures were reimposed.

Irish medical experts, politicians and members of the public are all debating what went wrong.

The seasonality of the virus, the presence of the most transmissible UK variant and the mixing of households during the holidays all contributed to the outbreak, according to a spokesperson for Prime Minister Micheál Martin’s office.

The peak is not “simplistic” and a number of factors led to it, the spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday.

“We have seen an increase in socializations over the Christmas period and our public health experts have said the seasonality of the virus is a huge factor,” they said.

Ireland reopened the hospitality industry and other sectors with some restrictions on December 4. Defending the move, the spokesperson said affected sectors “generally” adhere to public health measures and the incidence of infection was “relatively low” in hospitality, retail and business. construction settings.

Most contagious British variant, first discovered in Ireland on Christmas Day, “had a very significant impact [on] the growth of cases because it is believed to be between 50% and 70% more transmissible, ”added the spokesperson.

Some 40% of the most recent positive cases of Covid-19 in Ireland are caused by the most contagious UK variant, Cillian De Gascun, director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, said in a statement on Monday.

From December 18, Irish households were allowed to mingle with up to two others, although other European countries have canceled Christmas gatherings.

More than 54,000 people flew to the Republic of Ireland between December 21 and January 3, according to the Department of Justice.

“There was no properly managed isolation system in place,” Royal Society of Medicine president of epidemiology and public health Gabriel Scally told CNN on Tuesday. “Ireland and Britain are islands that don’t fare well in Covid terms when you look at others. There was an understandable desire for normalcy at Christmas after a tough year; but the virus doesn’t know it.”

Ireland closed restaurants, food pubs and some shops on Christmas Eve and has since stepped up its lockdowns – including shutting down non-essential construction sites, schools and childcare services. children.

There are currently 1,582 Covid-19 patients hospitalized in Ireland, 146 of whom are in intensive care, just before the spring peak of 155, according to the health department.

“We know that hospitalizations occur within weeks of a confirmed case being reported, and mortality thereafter,” Ireland’s Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan said in a statement on Monday. “This means that we are unfortunately set for a period of time when the situation in our hospitals worsens before it improves.”

Ireland has only five intensive care beds per 100,000 population, which is well below the OECD22 average of 12, according to OECD data.

So far, the country has reported a total of more than 152,000 Covid-19 cases and 2,352 deaths, according to a count from Johns Hopkins University.

As for the recent spike, the tools to deal with “this accelerated growth rate” are in Ireland’s hands, according to Nolan, who chairs NPHET’s Irish Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group.

He added that he hoped the current measures “would significantly suppress the transmission of the virus”.