Explanation badly needed for roadmap’s lockdown loopholes

COLUMN

The weekend’s Covid-19 figures gave genuine cause for optimism. Two consecutive days of fewer than 100 new cases is wonderful news: given about one-in-eight cases end up in hospital, and one-in-eight of those need intensive care, the burden on the health service should hopefully begin to wane into nothingness.

Hospital figures are the ones that policy makers will pay closest attention to. While cases in the broader population are still something to worry about, hospital capacity is the reason we’ve fought for two months to flatten the curve. At the time of writing, the number of people in hospital had fallen for 13 of the previous 15 days. Intensive care usage has fallen now on a regular basis for a month.

This is why it seems the time is right to take the baby steps of re-opening the economy, starting with yesterday’s (Monday’s) return of the construction industry and reopening of some retail businesses.

On that, though, the government owes us a bit of an explanation. The roadmap published three weeks ago specifically said homeware stores would be permitted to reopen under Phase 1. We learned last Friday, though, that they’re still expected to close for the coming weeks.

Maybe that’s a fear of ‘the IKEA factor’. Maybe the authorities fear the need of adding a new subcategory, of ‘home furnishings stores’, to the daily figure of Covid-19 clusters. In fairness, having spent so much time cooped up at home, no doubt many people have suddenly fallen out of love with their bedsheets or bathroom mat. At the time of writing, there seemed to be plenty of people who would ignore Simon Harris’s urges and who were flocking to garden centres and DIY stores. It’s wild to think more people could contract Covid-19 in Woodies than in Coppers.

Officially speaking, we are told it was an error to include homeware stores in the roadmap to begin with. The roadmap was trying to summarise the shops which were allowed to remain open for the three days before ‘full’ lockdown at the end of March, and incorrectly included ‘homeware’ in its description.

But nonetheless: it’s deeply unfair that homeware shops (which also sell hardware) can’t open, but hardware shops (which usually sell homeware) can. It’s already been unfair to some sectors that larger Tesco or Dunnes Stores outlets could sell you clothes when clothes stores are shut. It’s even more laughable when Dunnes and Woodies can sell you a sweeping brush but Homestore And More aren’t even allowed to sell their ‘more’

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