{"id":375192,"date":"2026-03-31T19:55:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/375192\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T19:55:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:55:07","slug":"ireland-must-work-seriously-to-implement-public-health-reforms-covid-group-concludes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/375192\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland must work ‘seriously’ to implement public health reforms, covid group concludes\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The covid-19<\/a> evaluation group heard from Irish and international experts on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chairwoman professor Anne Scott summed up the morning by saying, \u201cwe are here six years down the line and probably no better prepared than we were in 2020\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n Schools\u00a0<\/p>\n

Governments opted for lockdowns \u201cbecause of lack of understanding\u201d around risks, according to Professor Mark Woolhouse, University of Edinburgh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He recalled briefing the government there around reopening schools in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur best guess was that a chance of a child going to school in Scotland and dying from covid they caught in the school was roughly equivalent to the child being struck by lightning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He described school closures as \u201cunnecessary\u201d, saying \u201cwe didn\u2019t need to do that but we did it”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Professor Anthony Staines, Dublin City University, was a member of the Independent Scientific Advisory Group during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also knew that children got devastating illness from it (covid-19) but what we didn\u2019t realise was that illness is exceedingly rare in proportion to the number of infections. We didn\u2019t know that then, we know that now,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat explains some of the fear around children.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Students and parents of young children were among those \u201cparticularly impacted\u201d by lockdowns according to Professor Sarah Burke, Trinity College Dublin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Professor Patricia Leahy-Warren, School of Nursing and Midwifery at UCC, also noted \u201cmajor service disruption\u201d to school health services including vaccinations and child health checks.<\/p>\n

\n Trust\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Mike Ryan, the Sligo man who led on the emergency response for the World Health Organisation, focused on trust.<\/p>\n

Scientific communities can deal with rapidly changing advice based on new research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However he said communications around new advice managed to \u201cturn a trust pothole into a trust chasm\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the pandemic \u201cdidn\u2019t cause the lack of trust in the system\u201d, but indicated it significantly increased since then.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we communicate with the public, and how do we communicate uncertainty,\u201d should be a key part of future pandemic preparation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Professor David Heymann, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, is on the covid-19 evaluation panel.<\/p>\n

He recalled an increase in \u201carmchair experts\u201d during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were bogus scientists who were promoting drugs that weren\u2019t effective, and political leaders at the same time who were trying to show they were in charge rather than public health,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n Lockdowns\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Anders Tegnell, Sweden\u2019s State Epidemiologist, said restaurants were regulated but not closed there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They were asked to \u201creorganise their businesses to minimise social interactions” instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat proved to work reasonably well, we didn\u2019t see any outbreaks in restaurants in Sweden,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sweden’s government asked people also to work from home, and he said mobile phone data showed about 50% of the workforce did this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very important to close this down as much as possible,\u201d he said, due to the high transmission rates in work-places.<\/p>\n

Antigen tests<\/p>\n

Prof Woolhouse described how this was \u201ca game changer\u201d for monitoring in Scotland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, he said it was rolled out too slowly and could have been more useful than it was.<\/p>\n

Irish experts did not focus on antigen testing, which was hugely controversial here also.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Nursing Homes\n <\/p>\n

Mary Codd, Associate Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at University College Dublin, said infection control training in nursing homes was \u201cseriously missing or substandard\u201d in 2020.<\/p>\n

One survey she worked on then with 400 staff revealed \u201cless than 50% of our long-term residential care facilities had training in infection prevention control prior to the pandemic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other research she was involved with showed among over-70s cocooning at home \u201cmortality was no different, no bigger, in that group than in general population\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, for nursing home residents: \u201cMortality in that group, age-matched to over-70s was 21 times higher.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some 60% of those who died in wave 1 were in nursing homes even though this group is equal to only 5% of the population, she added.<\/p>\n

Now six years later, she said: \u201cWe have not addressed adequately the residential care facilities factors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not addressed occupancy, staffing, renumeration, rotation, training\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said infection prevention control is improved, but was also critical of lack of change for isolation facilities, oversight and regulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are lessons that have been learned that we need to act on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0All-Island approach\u00a0<\/p>\n

Professor Ivan Perry, University College Cork, focused on how Northern Ireland and Ireland co-operated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lacked political and institutional structures needed for a coordinated all-island pandemic response, something that must be prioritised before the next pandemic,\u201d he urged.<\/p>\n

He also pointed out how separate health structures still are, saying for example Cork city hosts five key units but they are all in separate locations.<\/p>\n

\n Evaluation summary\u00a0<\/p>\n

Professor Anne Scott noted concerns around lack of readiness in many areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at the heart of it is a clear acceptance that people were trying to do their best in quite difficult circumstances,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can certainly learn from the lack of preparation. I think there\u2019s widespread agreement: \u2018we were not prepared\u2019.<\/p>\n

“We should not find ourselves in that situation in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd given that a number of people are flagging ‘we are here six years down the line and probably no better prepared than we were in 2020\u2019 we\u2019ve got to wake up and move fairly quickly on this, fairly seriously, to implement those recommendations including those around public health reform, public health structures in the country that we already have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cWe don\u2019t have to wait for another report, we actually have the information and the recommendations here.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The covid-19 evaluation group heard from Irish and international experts on Tuesday.\u00a0 Chairwoman professor Anne Scott summed up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[160,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-375192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-covid-19","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}