Sir, – Brian O'Brien (Letters, 4September 4th) replied to my article "Zero Covid must be the aim of Ireland's health authorities" (Opinion & Analysis, ,September 3rd), saying, as others have, that Ireland and New Zealand are so different, geographically and in other ways, that we should not learn from their policy of seeking to eliminate the virus (zero Covid), which relies heavily on a combination of lockdown and testing and tracing.
Ireland is relying overwhelmingly on lockdown – the Government seems to be resigned to recurrent waves of virus infections into the future which we will have to learn to live with.
Your letter writer points out we have an open border with Northern Ireland, that we travel a lot, and our economy relies heavily on trade and tourism. He says testing all of those who come and go is not feasible.
Most new cases today (surprisingly said to be 98 per cent) are domestic but we do need to, and can, put stronger controls in place on travellers.
First, we should try to achieve an agreement with Northern Ireland for an all-island policy. We should continue to encourage people not to make non-essential journeys out of Ireland. We should test all arrivals at all ports, grade them by risk due to origin, trace their movements and contacts with great precision, and test again five days later.
The number of cases is rising and I am concerned, as is the Minister for Health, that they will continue to rise. Another heavy lockdown may be necessary and will probably get us back to about 10 cases per day.
But we should be aiming to run the number of new cases down further to single figures per day toward zero Covid. That will need rapid stringent test and trace responses to all new cases, identifying and containing every cluster.
When we reach a few cases per day countrywide, most regions could be given zero-Covid status and be free from all severe constraints, which is what is happening in New Zealand at the moment.
Finally, if some do not want to consider looking at New Zealand, perhaps they will have a look at Scotland. It has a dual policy in which testing and tracing is much more prominent than in Ireland.
So far they have tested 622,000 people, just over 11 per cent of the population; they contact on average four people per new infection, including asymptomatics. My impression is that Scotland, which did not do as well as we did in the early phase of the pandemic, is much better prepared for dealing with the second wave than we are because they are emphasising test and trace.
This should be prominent in our new Government policy, due to be announced in the near future.
It should aim for elimination of the virus, that is for zero Covid, – Yours, etc,
DAVID McCONNELL,
Fellow Emeritus in Genetics,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.