Bracing for a new round of closures

• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Reasonable questions will now arise as to the wisdom of delaying that decision until Tuesday. The extra few days will give public health officials more data on the trends, and Nphet no doubt hopes that its bleak situation report on Thursday will itself produce a shift in behaviour. But given the clear upward trajectory in the infection rate and the tone of public comments from Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar yesterday, it would appear that an early tightening of the rules is now inevitable.

The hospitality sector understandably complains of being singled out, though its representatives overstate the case by saying that no cases have been linked to restaurants in recent weeks. The contact tracing system does not engage in systematic retrospective analysis of sites of transmission, so we do not know where people are catching the disease. But it stands to reason that transmission is occurring to some degree in enclosed spaces where people congregate, and that includes pubs and restaurants. The Government has rightly said keeping schools and childcare centres open is its priority. That leaves few other options if it wishes to...