A friend of mine is a nurse in a Dublin theatre ward. She doesn’t remember being under as much pressure in work in her long career as she is now. And it doesn’t appear to be getting better for her or her colleagues any time soon.
ressed head to toe in PPE, covering double shifts, she is weary. “We permanently have staff out with Covid, not sick like in the beginning but off the floor, so we are all doing overtime,” she said.
Last week the Dublin Government announced the national testing programme will be phased out by autumn. In addition, Covid-19 testing will only be provided to healthcare workers, like others, if directed by a GP or clinician.
This angers my nursing friend, who caught Covid-19 two months ago, when her daughter, who became infected in work, brought it home.
She initially tested negative, which, had it been a working day, would have required her to go into work under new guidance, which will scrap testing for close contacts.
She tested positive the following day, and isolated until she was no longer infectious.
In Northern Ireland, lateral flow testing has just been extended by Northern health minister Robin Swann until August. After that, who knows?
One in 17 people in Northern Ireland was estimated to have Covid last week, the highest since April. Swann stated that while the “overall risk of serious illness” is “much lower than in previous waves… we continue to see severe pressure in our hospitals”.
We do, indeed. Just this week, various hospitals issued public notices stating people would face a long wait if their condition was non-urgent. On Tuesday, the Antrim emergency department had 66 people awaiting a bed.
Isolation periods are reduced to five days in Northern Ireland, meaning many will be forced to return to work as employers have already changed their sick policies in line with government guidance. In Ireland, the period is seven, or if you have had no symptoms for 48 hours.
My friend was still testing positive on day 11. A month on, she is still exhausted, and still has a cough. I have lost count of the number of other people I know with similar stories.
It is difficult to see the relaxation of government advice on isolation and reducing the availability of testing as anything other than administrations on both sides of the Border knowing they have lost the dressing room when it comes to controlling Covid transmission — now so prevalent it is easier to talk about people who haven’t caught it.
Early in the pandemic, compliance with guidance was good, fostering a sense of caring for each other, to benefit the most vulnerable.
North of the Border, mixed messaging and poor communication appeared to allow a cacophony of crackpots, conspiracy theorists and those with a natural aversion to authority to dictate policy.
Now adherence to public health measures is woeful. Almost no one wears a mask. A few weeks ago I attended a routine hospital appointment and passed people outside an ICU ward who were maskless.
Hard to fathom, I know.
It is harder still to understand what the Dublin Government is playing at by reducing testing availability, just as we head out of one wave, and almost certainly into another, made worse by a winter where flu and monkeypox will also loom large.
While Swann still maintains the confidence of his colleagues, largely due to his ability not to be drawn into political wrangling, his southern counterpart Stephen Donnelly is up against it.
Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane came out swinging, albeit dourly, on Thursday. He accused Donnelly of being “not at the races on any of these issues”, while also asking: “What will the public health infrastructure look like going in to the winter?”
It’s a reasonable question, particularly as advice from the World Health Organisation is to continue testing. Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was very clear this week: “In addition to vaccination, WHO urges all countries to assess and strengthen their readiness and response plans for future waves of Covid-19 transmission, including surveillance, testing, strong clinical management and a well-equipped health workforce,” he said.
Inexplicably, the Dublin Government has reportedly decided to end routine serial testing in nursing homes. What happened to protecting those most at risk?
While vaccines have ensured that we have fewer people on ventilators, allowing various variants of Covid-19 to rip through a community with no herd immunity is reckless.
Removal of mass testing, if a cost-cutting measure, is also a false economy, resulting in less isolation and more infections in the workplace, in schools, nursing homes, and hospitals — which is putting pressure on other services.
In my friend’s hospital, cancer operations are cancelled on almost a weekly basis either because surgeons or patients have tested positive. In Northern Ireland, health waiting lists are the longest in the UK.
For the immunocompromised, elderly people and healthcare workers, it’s going to be a long winter.
Roll on the Covid public inquiries.