What do we need to do to get Ireland to the second tier for Christmas?

The current level five measures have been in place for a period of six weeks and are expected to expire on 1 December.

While it does not appear that health officials will accelerate our exit from the current blockade, the first positive signs suggest that we may be able to loosen the restrictions on schedule.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said yesterday that the plan for next month is to “reopen” and added “there is a possibility that it could be level two”.

Donnelly told RTE: “The plan for December is, for the first week of December, to reopen.

“There are various ways that can be done that will be given further consideration closer to date, but critically to keep the country open. So, for example, it could be level 3, there is a possibility that it could be level two, or maybe a regional approach would have been adopted. “

However it is important to know what level of progress we need to see by the end of the month, and experts from the National Public Health Emergency Team have given us some pointers on what they are looking for.

Here’s what we know so far about what needs to be done:

1. Reach about 100 cases per day

A broad goal set by health experts is to reduce our number of daily cases to around 100 per day by December. This would be a huge decrease from the levels we were seeing before the arrival of Level Five, where more than 1,000 cases were often recorded per day.

Last month the chief medical officer, Dr. Tony Holohan explained: “Our hope is that we can reduce infections to a level that we can manage.

“The lower we go, the better we do, the longer it will take for the infections to recur. In simple terms, it would be very important if we went to Christmas with 500 cases a day, or 50 a day.

“We don’t want to be in a situation where we have to ask people to substantially limit the things we care about during the Christmas season, which will be difficult for all of us.

“But there are things that will have to be different. We will not go back to a Christmas like we knew last year, none of us knew anything about Covid last Christmas. This is something new, there will clearly be a change in the way we live Christmas like any other time of the year, while we have this virus around. “

2. Lower incidence rates

The 14-day incidence rate of confirmed cases per 100,000 population is one of the most important measures used by health officials to determine how many restrictions are needed.

And unfortunately, the numbers in Dublin remain stubbornly high at the moment, with up to 40% of all cases registered in the capital on any given day, while its incidence rate is currently 201.5.

Government strategists are starting to consider different levels of restrictions in different regions, to allow for less severe restrictions in cities or counties that have Covid rates under control.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said yesterday: “The rate is falling well in some parts of the country, but once again in Dublin it is not falling as rapidly.

“There are some parts of Dublin where it’s not falling fast and there is a part in the South West where it’s not falling at all. And there are parts of north Dublin where it’s actually climbing again.

“So all of these details need to be scrutinized as we figure out the best way to open up as much as possible, but critically do it in a way that doesn’t allow the virus to rise again.”

3. As much suppression as possible

Dr Cillian De Gascun, NPHET member and president of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, rejected suggestions that our recent progress would mean exiting Level 5 before the December 1 deadline.

He said the goal is to get the number of cases as low as possible before December.

The NPHET expert states that the lower our number of active cases at the end of this block, the longer we will be able to keep the numbers low.

Dr. De Gascun told RTE Radio One: “It’s too early to say what success will be. From a social perspective, we want to reduce this number as much as possible, because the lower we get it to December, the longer the benefit we will get. from the interventions we have implemented.

“I think it’s really important that although the numbers in the last few days have been positive, we still have over 300 people in the hospital, in or about 50 people in ICU, and even though yesterday’s 460 odd cases are better than the 1,200 we had. a week ago, within those numbers, people will end up in hospital, people will end up in intensive care and sadly some people will die.

“It is very important that people continue to maintain the surgery and not consider releasing them early at this point.

“The plan at this stage is that we have a six-week program to lower ourselves as much as possible in order to make sure we can suppress the virus again to ideally return to the levels we had in the summer.”