Public hygiene facilities 'an embarrassment' and need to be improved to fight Covid-19, expert says
Jack Lambert, professor in Infectious Diseases at the Mater and Rotunda hospitals and UCD school of medicine has warned against the lifting of restrictions in relation to Covid-19.
It is too soon to “unlock the lockdown” as there are too many community clusters such as the homeless, drug users and student populations where the virus has yet to be identified, he said.
Prof Lambert told Newstalk Breakfast that when walking to work in the Mater hospital he passes houses where there are groups of people sitting out on porches not practicing social or physical distancing.
“It’s a cluster thing, you can’t do anything (about lifting restrictions) until you address that. We need action, boots on the ground, not talk.”
Prof Lambert said it was an “embarrassment” the lack of sanitary conditions in some shops.
"I've walked around time going to and from work and other situations...It's an embarrassment the kind of facilities that are there," he said.
"People are doing what they can, but is it the responsibility of a little shop to ensure they have all the hand sanitisers and so on in place?
"They need directions, supervisions and support. None of that's in place."
Post offices were doing “absolutely nothing” with no hand sanitizer, doors that had to be pushed to open..How can you lift the lockdown when you don’t have plans in place for that,” he added.
Efforts by Dublin Bike to clean handlebars with baby wipes were not good enough, he said. “They need to do better, baby wipes are not good enough.”
The situation in nursing homes was chaotic, he said. There needed to be better testing, better education about PPE and more PPE.
Plans for nursing homes should have been developed two to three weeks ago, he said.
