Just three weeks ago an Irish Examiner headline writer told us that whilst Ireland’s Covid cases are rising, “we are still in a good position compared to our neighbours”. Not that you’d guess that from the complete funk the Dublin media just now.
The 14-day incidence rate for infections in Ireland is currently 80.4 per 100,000 which is the second lowest in the EU. Only remote Iceland is doing better with a rate of 49.3 cases.
Yesterday The Irish Times noted that here were 3,394 cases of Covid-19 reported by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) on Saturday, “almost double the highest number previously recorded in one day”.
In another piece:
…the impact of Christmas festivities on rising Covid-19 cases is set to be up to 15 times worse than pessimistic predictions made just weeks ago by public health officials leading the response to the pandemic.
Reasons for this is not clear, but key factors are likely to be an open Christmas (which ended premature on the 22nd December) and the fact that we’re right in the depth of midwinter. Minus a vaccine, suppression is all you’ve got.
What effect its earlier than planned return to Level Five will have in what would have been a holiday period of low commercial mixing. But the consequences are clear enough, but faced with this wave, closing was probably all it could do.
The Independent reports Professor Philip Nolan, chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) modelling group, saying that “hospitalisations are now doubling every seven to 10 days”.
All of which has now given rise to a political donnybrook of almighty proportions. I’ve not been inclined to give any government (or local administration) a hard time over how they handle the progress of this most difficult to predict disease.
Rifts between government and its advisors seem to have led to the official framework being ignored when a six week Level Five lockdown in October and November was enforced despite data showing a modest improvement at Level Three.
It’s easy to panic when so much is at stake, but it is also important to learn and move on. As my friend John Kellden has observed, data should about “uncovering the options we need, rather than using data to reinforce what we’ve already got”.
Nor has Northern Ireland been a paragon of virtue. The Executive took nearly three weeks to act on figures that were going through the roof in the North West and spilling over into Donegal. Masterly inaction. But it has relatively been lucky too.
Yet, given there have been more than 11,000 cases have been reported in Northern Ireland in the past seven days (ie, double the week before), as Peter notes, it’s not as though we are living in parallel universes:
Out of NI, Scotland, Wales and the English regions, London had the most COVID-19 cases per 100k over the last 7 days. However, Northern Ireland had by far the largest increase (166% in a week, Scotland was 2nd with 87%). NI now level with South East England. pic.twitter.com/fzal9C8zVF
— Peter Donaghy (@peterdonaghy) January 3, 2021
The key divergence is not in the burgeoning figures, but the prospect of final egress from the grip of the disease. This is where north and south diverge profoundly, for the moment. “Lockdowns”, as Eoin O’Malley says, “offer a false bottom”.
Pfizer has said the vaccine is designed on the basis of two doses 21 days apart, but data suggest a single dose could give as much as 90pc protection against severe illness due to Covid-19 from just a single dose.
Both parts of the island now have vaccines. However the south has struggled to set up the logistics needed to get its harder to distribute Pfizer vaccine to those who need it on the front line of this crisis. Oxford AstroZ is only available in NI.
That’s because the EU has still to get around to signing off the latter, something that is causing unease in Germany where against convention they have begun to make their own deals. France is likely to follow too, if they don’t get moving soon.
Money can move mountains. Through a combination of small, scale, world class health services and general mobilisation of slack resources, Israel now has something like 41% of its over 60s population vaccinated. Trouble is, Ireland doesn’t have it.
O’Malley again…
So Ireland is depending on getting supply from the EU, something that it cannot control.
We can control how quickly we use the ones we have. The experience in the US suggests that getting the vaccines into people’s arms is a bigger problem than getting their hands on the vaccines in the first place.
Ireland’s ability to do this part can be measured against all the other EU countries. We would do well to take Mike Ryan’s advice: “speed trumps perfection”.
I’ve no doubt we will catch up with each other, but in Northern Ireland, with something like 80% of all care homes visited by vaccine teams already [Whatever that means? – Ed] the next (hopefully final) phase of flattening the curve is well begun.
The recent decline in the share of UK COVID-19 cases among over 80s has flattened out since Christmas. It appears to be an open question the extent to which vaccination and/or Christmas mixing is driving this. pic.twitter.com/ZSsOI5oKrZ
— Peter Donaghy (@peterdonaghy) January 3, 2021
As you take the vulnerable out of the equation, Covid becomes much less of a threat to the wider population. As Northern Ireland continues to target care homes and the older population more generally, what do we do about a lagging south?
Some unkind (and unfair) notions have been floated throughout this crisis, such as closing the border or enforcing, in some curiously unarticulated way, a single all island policy. But in the context of a divergence, something will have to be done.
The Northern Ireland Executive’s response has been stodgy to say the least, particularly when it has been faced with issues that might have constituency effects for individual players at the table (and not just the Storey funeral).
If we are lucky the EU will get its collective fingers out and let the Republic get ahead with the Oxford vaccine (or as much of it as will be allocated). But over the next few months, Northern Ireland may be faced with an ultimate dilemma.
Close the border, or petition the UK government to ship what it can afford of the cheaper and easier to use Oxford vaccine to to the Republic protect the free movement of people between the islands through the Common Travel Area?
My bet is that they will do their level best to ignore the problem and hope that the stalemate will see them through until the time that the Republic finally catches up. Sadly, that’s what too often passes for leadership these days.
Photo by HVesna is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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