GP urging public to remain vigilant in face of Covid-19

A NAVAN GP is urging people to increase their vigilance against Covid-19 as the Omicron variant sweeps into the country.

Dr Marie Scully of the Abbey Road Medical Centre has warned that people with symptoms must isolate and get tested for the virus, because of the very high transmissibility of the new strand.

She said her practice has been extremely busy in recent weeks and warned that we will have to return to first wave levels of hand washing, distancing and hand sanitizer use.

“We are hearing a lot of patients claiming that they can’t have Covid when they have symptoms, because it’s their usual winter cold etc, and they are not isolating or getting Covid tests done.

“It’s really important to do both of these things to reduce spread.

“Antigen tests are useful for looking for cases in patients who are contacts or who don’t have symptoms, but once you develop symptoms (head cold, cough, fatigue) you must isolate and book a Covid PCR test,” she said.

“Given the reported transmissibility of Omicron people are going to need to be really careful in the weeks ahead.

It’s of course disappointing that we are back to this so close to Christmas but Omicron is incredibly infectious so I’m appealing to the public to increase their diligence.”

She says the surgery has been very busy for a number of weeks now and the demand for appointments has greatly exceeded the number available.

“We are trying to manage these as best as possible.

“Currently we are screening all patients for respiratory symptoms and these patients are required to have a negative Covid test before they can be seen face to face. Antigen tests are not sufficient. “Anyone without respiratory symptoms can be seen in person. Up to last week we were seeing the majority of patients face to face but are still offering telephone appointments where these are appropriate.”

She said last week was not noticeably worse but she anticipates Omicron will affect that in the coming weeks.

“We are also going to have to be even more careful about patients coming in to the surgery.

“We are running booster clinics and have vaccinated pretty much all our over 70’s and those with chronic illnesses.

“Our clinics currently are being limited by vaccine supply issues. We were advised last week that all practices would be able to order additional vaccine supplies and we had allocated extra clinics (doctors and nurses coming in on time off) but then found we were unable to get extra deliveries as promised so that was disappointing to say the least,” she said.