The Government and public health officials face a dilemma in deciding when and how to ease the restrictions that have put social and economic life on hold for more than six weeks. Those measures have succeeded in suppressing the coronavirus outbreak, ensuring that our hospitals were not overwhelmed and saving many lives. But that success has come at a cost. Huge numbers of people have lost their jobs. The lockdown has taken a heavy toll on mental health and deprived many people of human contact. The country’s economic prospects have been dealt a severe blow. We are, inescapably, coming to a point where something will have to give.
At the same time, the gains of recent weeks are all too fragile. The infection curve is going in the right direction, but it's far from flat. Hundreds of new cases and dozens of deaths are being reported every day and Covid-19 has taken hold in an alarming number of nursing homes. Divergent approaches between the Republic and Northern Ireland continue to undermine the containment effort. It should come as little surprise, then, that officials are tamping down expectations of a significant easing of restrictions next Tuesday.
If a strong view emerges from the National Public Health Emergency Team that the bulk of the current restrictions should continue for another few weeks, then we should accept that. But the Government’s failure so far to provide any roadmap for the coming weeks will make it more difficult to bring the public along. While other EU states have set out timelines for the gradual reopening of their societies, we are less than a week away from the expiry of the current lockdown period and still have no sense of a national plan.
A great deal of progress has been made. Public resolve is holding firm. But people need to see the plan
Moreover, it is a misjudgment to be insinuating, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has done, that an extension of the lockdown would be due to a rise in public non-compliance. Recent increases in outdoor activity are tiny compared to the overall decline in traffic and footfall since mid-March. Instead of fretting over small shifts in seismic vibrations, the Government must do more to fulfil its side of the bargain.
If restrictions cannot be eased next week, it will be in large part because the State itself is not ready. We still do not have an adequate test-and-trace system, and the Department of Health appears to have again set unrealistic testing targets without a plan for reaching them. We barely have enough masks for care settings, let alone for community use. And the crisis in nursing homes suggests a failure to plan and implement a strategy to protect some of the most vulnerable members of society.
A great deal of progress has been made. Public resolve is holding firm. But people need to see the plan. And they need to know that the we’re-in-this-together mantra means what it suggests: the people will do their bit, and so will the Government.