Public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally has called for public health ‘hit squads’ to be mobilised to respond to any local clusters of Covid-19 that may occur.
The country’s Covid-19 strategy should be about dealing with the virus, not “reopening things” he told Newstalk’s Pat Kenny show.
Dr Scally said he did not like “the notion” of “living with the virus” — there wasn’t talk about living with other diseases such as TB, diphtheria or measles.
“I would really love to see a strategy which talks about beating Covid, getting to Zero Covid, no Covid, or suppression of Covid. Those are the sort of things that appeal to me.”
One of the weaknesses across both the UK and Ireland had been a lack of such strategies, with the focus instead on “plans to get us out of lockdowns,” he said.
Opportunity
There was now a “great opportunity” to put in place a plan for the next six to 12 months and “some really good thinking” was now required to navigate through the next difficult period, he said.
“We need to be able to mobilise and send in hit squads to deal with this virus anytime we get cases and clusters popping up. But to do that is no mean task, we’ve had a year now to mobilise public health resources at a local level.”
Public health doctors were extraordinarily important, he said and needed to be “brought into the game” and provided with the necessary powers and resources.
“You have to get your case numbers down in your own place and country and you must stop the variants coming in. You have to do the two things, doing one is not enough.”
