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Ireland\u2019s strict lockdown should continue until community transmission of Covid-19 is eliminated, People Before Profit has said.<\/p>\nIreland\u2019s strict lockdown should continue until community transmission of Covid-19 is eliminated, People Before Profit has said.<\/p>\n
Richard Boyd Barrett called for the Government to abandon its policy of living with Covid and instead implement a zero-Covid approach in a bid to \u201csave summer\u201d.<\/p>\n
He made the comments at the launch of the party\u2019s updated zero-Covid policy document outside Government Buildings in Dublin on Friday.<\/p>\n
Mr Boyd Barrett said the country was now in a \u201creally frightening\u201d situation where Covid-19 was \u201cout-of-control\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has to be recognition that the Government\u2019s living with Covid policy has failed and failed disastrously. You cannot live alongside Covid-19,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to embrace a different strategy that\u2019s about eliminating community transmission of Covid-19 so we can get beyond the terrible cycle of lockdown and surge.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said a zero-Covid policy was a policy of saying \u201cwe have to start chasing Covid-19 to eliminate it rather than Covid-19 chasing us in and out of one surge and one lockdown after another.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a policy to save the summer because at this stage we are almost certain if we follow the current policy we\u2019re going to face another surge, another lockdown come the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said adopting a zero-Covid approach would mean lockdown continuing for at least a couple of months, if not longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re probably facing into that anyway,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea that the current lockdown is going to end by the end of January that is fantastical.<\/p>\n
It was very clear talking to Dr Tony Holohan at the leaders\u2019 briefing they couldn\u2019t even say with certainty that we\u2019d be out of this by St Patrick\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of the zero-Covid strategy Mr Boyd Barrett said all non-essential travel must stop: \u201cThe idea that we just pick one or two countries to limit entry into the country is nonsense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere should be no non-essential travel. Other European countries are already starting to do that. Germany in effect is doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said the Government needed to enforce that non-essential workplaces are closed during the lockdown.<\/p>\n
Rise TD Paul Murphy said the responsibility for the current predicament lies \u201cvery firmly\u201d with the Government which made \u201cdisastrous decisions with deadly consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were warned by Nphet. They blatantly ignored those warnings and went against Nphet\u2019s advice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government is trying to shirk that responsibility and that\u2019s completely wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said many of the main opposition parties had largely gone along with the yo-yo lockdown approach of the Government and he called on Sinn Fein to throw its \u201csubstantial weight\u201d behind a zero-Covid strategy.<\/p>\n
People Before Profit\u2019s Dublin North West representative, Conor Reddy, a PhD Researcher in Immunology from Trinity College Dublin, said the country would not vaccinate its way out of the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing the government\u2019s \u2018living with Covid\u2019 strategy until we have completed achieved population-level immunity by vaccination will take months and potentially several more cycles of surge and lockdown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a strategy to eliminate community transmission of the virus like Australia, New Zealand and many Asian countries have achieved \u2013 having vaccines on hand will accelerate this process and in turn, having lower levels of transmission will aid the immunization effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we commit to a new approach now, we can break the cycle of rolling surges and lockdowns and make this our last lockdown.\u201d<\/p>\n