Spread of Covid-19 infection has reached a 'plateau' with growth rate 'close to zero'
Ireland has reached a “plateau” in terms of the spread of the Covid-19 infection, while the key metric for the growth of the virus has now been driven as low as it needs to be.
The latest briefing from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) heard that the growth rate is now “close to zero”, indicating that the exponential growth in the spread of the virus has been stopped effectively by the lockdown restrictions currently in place.
Meanwhile, the country has recorded its second highest death toll to date from the virus of 43, just one short of the previous largest figure of 44 which was reported on Tuesday of this week. Those figures mean that 486 people have lost their lives due to Covid-19 to date.
Some 724 new cases were recorded, 629 of which were delivered from Irish laboratories (a 31% increase in just six days) and 95 from German testing facilities, giving an overall total of 13,271.
While there have now been 254 outbreaks in nursing homes (in which the overall total of clusters is now 163) and other residential settings, that represents a rise of just four on the day after two weeks of heavy growth, Dr Tony Holohan, the chief medical officer, said.
Some 302 people have now died originating from nursing and residential care homes, Dr Holohan said - 253 of them in nursing homes alone, representing 52% of all deaths.
There are encouraging signs that Ireland has reached the apex of the outbreak, according to Professor Philip Nolan, chair of NPHET’s epidemiological modelling advisory group, who addressed the briefing to give an update on the scientific modelling of the spread of the virus.
He said that since April 3 the growth rate in new cases, once legacy tests received on delay from German laboratories have been backdated, has been “close to zero”, giving Ireland an R0 (R Naught, the number of people infected by a carrier of the disease, a key viral metric) of between 0.7 and 1, versus its starting point of between two and four at the start of the outbreak.
Had no restrictions been introduced in Ireland the country would be looking at total confirmed cases figure of 120,000, Professor Nolan said, with 800 people in intensive care. He said, however, that the current reproductive rate of the illness has been stable “for the past week”.
“There is no need to drive that number lower, it is where it needs to be,” Professor Nolan said. “The measures introduced are a very crude way of getting the number below 1. The challenge now is to keep it at the same level using more liberal measures.”
Professor Nolan said that a “plateau” is a more accurate way of describing the point on the outbreak scale where Ireland currently finds itself than the oft-mentioned “peak”.
“The modelling suggests that we may have reached a plateau,” he said. “We’re at a moment of very delicate balance between suppression of the disease and further outbreak.”
He said that what comes after May 5 (the next deadline for an update on lockdown restrictions) needs to be “very imaginatively thought through” and “exceptionally carefully managed”. That could amount to restrictions being lifted to an extent, and then reimposed should a resurgence of the disease occur, he said. “We can manage a slight spike, but not a large one.”
“It would be very easy to have the number jump back up to 2 in a matter of weeks,” he said.
“Even a number of 1.2 puts us on an unsustainable track,” Dr Holohan added.
