No new COVID cases in Co Tipperary yesterday as meat factories under scrutiny

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A member of the National Public Health Emergency Team says it’s “impossible” to know when Covid 19 outbreaks in the midlands will be brought under control.

174 new cases were confirmed last night, the highest daily increase since May.

Most of them were in Kildare, which is under lockdown along with Laois and Offaly for the next two weeks.

However, Tipperary is one of 11 counties where no new cases were reported yesterday.

Philip Nolan, chair of the NPHET Modelling Advisory Group, says it’s unclear when clusters in meat plants will be dealt with:

“There’s a lot of people to be tested right now and we’d expect to see quite a number of those test come through positive.

“We do expect to see relatively high cases in the coming days and it’s impossible to say when this will be wrestled back under control.

“It could be a matter of days, it could be significantly longer.

“And whereas these outbreaks were expected, I’m not sure we expected to such a cluster of outbreaks in such a confined region of the country.”

Meanwhile, the head of the HSE says meat processing plants where there are significant Covid 19 outbreaks could be closed down.

CEO of the HSE, Paul Reid, says efforts need to be made to control outbreaks in meat plants:

“We do want to recognise that they have put in place a lot of measures in a lot of the plants, but in some cases we’ve had to close down plants and we’ll do so, on public health grounds, in the future.

“There needs to be some consideration about transportation of the workforce. There needs to be some consideration about strong infection prevention and control and understanding and communication.”