Gavan Reilly: Covid spike is a mystery - and there’s only one thing we can blame for sure

I went for the flu vaccine a couple of weeks ago. I don’t have any underlying conditions, and I’m generally in good health, but the nature of my work – and that of my wife, who is a teacher and lecturer - means we are both more likely to face the virus, and more likely to pass it on.

We got our doses in a pharmacy chain in the middle of a Dublin shopping centre, after which we nipped into an adjoining cafe for a late breakfast. Approaching the till as we started to fish out our phones, to show our Covid certificates, the cashier simply said: “that will be E8.50 please“. We were able to sit down – in an eatery which was busy, though not crowded – and have the meal in peace… Without once being asked to provide proof of our Covid vaccinations.

With the new arrival at home we haven’t been getting out much, so I don’t know quite how common this sort of experience is. But exchanging stories with colleagues at work in the last couple of days, it seems pretty clear that the premise of Covid certificates has been thrown out the window. Even though it is literally the law to require indoor customers to be vaccinated, it seems a large chunk of the catering and hospitality industry have simply stopped bothering to ask for it.

There is no single silver bullet to explain why Ireland is struggling so badly with Covid infections while other countries are not. A friend has just returned from a few days in Sweden, a country which has twice Ireland’s population but less than a third of its daily case numbers, and about a third of its numbers in intensive care. Remember, that’s the famous Sweden with its famously liberal approach to Covid management: my friend remains in the habit of wearing face masks in any public area, and at one point was mocked for being paranoid as she browsed the shop because she was the only person in the building covering her mouth. The death toll from the more recent waves compared badly to ours but the standard of everyday life is now back to total normality, no vaccine certificates needed.

It’s disconcerting that we don’t have any explanation for Ireland’s headline status. Some of the theories might make sense in isolation, but don’t carry the full burden. For example, some politicians use the excuse that Ireland is almost contaminated by its proximity to the UK. That might be true to a point, but Northern Ireland has not yet abolished all restrictions in the same way that England has - and even if it did, it wouldn’t count for the high levels of virus penetration in southern counties like Carlow or Waterford.

Schools

Then there is the argument about contact tracing in schools, where the country decided that a child without symptoms did not need to isolate. That might in itself seem like a contentious decision: education is the single largest organised congregation of people in this country, with nearly 1,000,000 people in classrooms every day, so deciding that healthy people need not isolate – even if they are known to be infected – was worthy of more debate than it got. It certainly seems like Ireland’s case numbers began to balloon when the change took effect in late September.

But that alone cannot carry the burden either. The policy for children is now largely similar to the policy for adults, where are fully vaccinated person doesn’t have to isolate even if they are the close contact of somebody else. Further, as the Business Post has been explaining, a deeper dive into the figures shows adult case numbers were consistently rising before that change, and while cases in children have risen modestly, adult numbers have not been very largely affected.

And don’t forget: it’s been the practice all year in Ireland that a vaccinated adult is immune from self-isolation unless they themselves start showing symptoms. We’ve known for months now that vaccinated people can still spread the virus to others, but have decided that any precautions - like working from home or, taking an antigen test to see if you’re infectious - are unnecessary. Placing the same policy for kids was at least consistent.

That leaves you scratching your head and thinking of other explanations. Is this our fairly lackadaisical attitude to ventilation? Was there any point in sending carbon dioxide monitors to schools around the country when there is no protocol for what to do when they turn red? If there were alternative venues available for classrooms with better ventilation, they would already be in use.

When a carbon dioxide monitor turns red, what exactly is the teacher to do? Anecdotal evidence from around the country seems that they are supposed to open another window and hope for the best.

Is there a broader architectural point? There is an argument that buildings in Ireland and Britain are designed to shield from the harsh Atlantic weather, and therefore put a greater emphasis on heat retention, then housing elsewhere in Europe. But then, why would the same problems not exist in Scandinavia? Is it that they’re more accustomed to dressing for the outdoors?

Uncertain future

It’s all a little bit of a mystery - which unfortunately makes the short term future a bit more unsettling, because there’s no obvious scapegoat or excuse for why we are where we are, once again deferring the idea of packed arenas or full stadiums, and revising plans for giant winter weddings.

Ultimately though, the reason why we now find ourselves having to delay normality again is not the number of cases itself but the extent of the burden on hospitals - and that’s a tale as old as time. It’s true that the government has put its money where its mouth is, and added nearly a thousand permanent beds since Covid began, but all of that extra capacity is immediately swallowed by the pandemic and we’re sprinting to stand still. We chronically underinvested in health capacity for years before the pandemic and that, we can say with certainty, is the one crucial action that has us where we are.