Covid 19 Part XXXIV-249,437 ROI(4,906 deaths) 120,195 NI (2,145 deaths)(01/05)Read OP

Deleted User wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0427/1212375-joe-walsh-tours/


Joe Walsh Tours has collapsed, all jobs gone, with immediate effect. Well done Ireland.
Aer Lingus to announce job losses this Winter in the number of approx 900.

We are going back into the dark ages in terms of travel and connectivity. Shameful.

Do you have an alternative? Should we have just opened up? Flights from everywhere to everywhere? No quarantine?

Travel virtually collapsed last year when there were no real restrictions on travel. It's more than ridiculous to suggest that a system of quarantine that was introduced six weeks ago suddenly caused the company to collapse.

Reading the context, it was the failure of suppliers to refund payments and refusal of insurance companies to cover costs that ultimately led to this.

Many other companies are treading water with zero business. JWT were obviously stuck in a more difficult position.

stephenjmcd wrote: »

395 positive swabs, 2.59% positivity on 15,273 tests.
7 day test positivity is 2.8%.


Last Tuesday

399 positive swabs, 2.65% positivity on 15,051 tests

Felt like we had a bit of a backlog building late last week, has that been cleared?

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

I'd say it'll be fine... have some been vaccinated already and all that.


But as its a Government Organisation, its very bad optics.

Oh yeah totally agree it will probably be fine and fun too but as you say it's about the optics None of the staff are vaccinated yet. Oldest I think she said is 58yrs.

She is worried though about catching covid and has been all through the pandemic.

Deleted User wrote: »

The numbers being presented in India are a fraction of the total, both deaths and cases. I hadn’t appreciated until I heard directly from Mumbai management today how serious it is down there

Yeah, from the little I've heard, it seems to be chaos. The testing system is completely overrun; both public and private. Meaning that there is a 5-7 day wait between booking the test and getting back results.

There are covid-specific hospitals set up with the oxygen and other equipment, but you cannot get admitted without a positive PCR test. Obviously these hospitals are 100% full anyway. Other hospitals are mostly full too but they will turn away anyone with covid symptoms if at all possible.

So you have the situation where people are developing breathing problems, but can't get admitted to a covid hospital, because they can't get a test. In some cases family members are driving them from hospital to hospital hoping for a bed to be available.

It's harrowing, but it also means the numbers are very unreliable. The cases being detected are only a fraction of those with symptoms, and there are a lot of people dying without having ever been tested. And if living people can't get tested, I doubt they're doing many tests on cadavers.

We won't really know the full scale of what's happening in India until the wave has burned out.

seamus wrote: »

JWT said they had done no trading since the start of the pandemic, even though there were no restrictions in place last year.

It would be incorrect to say that Ireland is closed for travel this summer and everyone else is open. Or even mostly open. Nobody has a clue what travel will look like this summer, in any country.

Did you miss the Head of EU announcement yesterday that vaccinated US travellers are allowed into Europe for holidays this summer?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/world/europe/american-travel-to-europe.html

Travel to Spain, Portugal, France, Italy(from June) and more are all open to tourism from EU and select other countries with no quarantine requirement.
Ireland is the outlier here - most other countries will be happily taking tourists this summer and likely beyond that as vaccinations ramp up.

The new travel routes out of Belfast airport are proof of this too, moved from Ireland to NI because in the south our travel rules are far too restrictive.

seamus wrote: »

We won't really know the full scale of what's happening in India until the wave has burned out.

Sadly, I don't think we will ever know. The detailed historic death records by which you might be able to make comparisons to estimate stuff like excess deaths are non existent.

Suffice to say comparing Ireland and India on per capita or whatever basis has about as much reliable grounding as comparing Ireland with Narnia.

Eod100 wrote: »

Interesting https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1387052080343388165?s=19

interesting..... is this backed by science elsewhere? I would be unlikely for Ireland to go out on a limb like this, but I've not seen such a declaration elsewhere.

Eod100 wrote: »

Interesting https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1387052080343388165?s=19

Wow that could be a game changer considering the amount of people under 50 who have had COVID

Should really speed up vaccinating 49 and under groups

seamus wrote: »

That's not actually what she said, because she wouldn't say that. The EU President doesn't have the power to decide travel policy for member states.

What she did say was that because the vaccines in use in the USA are the same as the ones in the EU, any American vaccinated will be considered "as vaccinated" as an EU citizen.

This will allow for the movement of full vaccinated individuals freely within the EU.

Ireland already allows free movement of fully vaccinated travellers without quarantine.

Meaning that we are fully in alignment with the rest of the bloc and International travel is on the agenda this Summer - for fully vaccinated individuals.

You might have missed that though.

You may have missed the shift in EU policy on "non-essential" travel - if you are vaccinated you can travel for any reason.

In Ireland the official recommendation is still against all non-essential travel into/out of the country. This line has not changed and there is no clarification that it will change - going by govt & NPHET statements, it sounds like non-essential travel is still off the cards all summer.

There is also still a €2000 fine if you are found to be attempting to travel outside the state without an essential-purpose for doing so. (Tourism is not deemed essential)

KrustyUCC wrote: »

Wow that could be a game changer considering the amount of people under 50 who have had COVID

Should really speed up vaccinating 49 and under groups

Close to 250,000 confirmed cases. Wonder how many are under 50 and haven't already received 2 doses of a vaccine?

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

We've had 248,000 covid cases in total, and about 140,000 of those are people between the ages of 16 and 49. We will have more vaccines that we need from July onwards, so I don't think this will make much difference to the pace of rollout.

Why is that?

Turning 140,000 people into one dose vaccines should speed things up I would have thought

KrustyUCC wrote: »

Why is that?

Turning 140,000 people into one dose vaccines should speed things up I would have thought

Can you identify that 140k people easily or is it same thing as cohort 4 and 7 where data is all over the place. Cos if it's the latter, the attempts to identify them might take us longer than it takes to just vaccinate them.

Also, NIAC advised but is that valid for the EU travel cert cos if it's not, no one will want just the one dose.

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

I do not think it is constitutionally possible to allow non-essential travel within the country borders, but not to allow travel abroad (or at least not to allow travel to countries with infection rates lower than Ireland and without variants of concern)

Until its been taken to court, the fines will remain and the pseudo ban on non-essential travel is still in place.

This is whats affecting the Irish aviation industry. It is not something mirrored across all of EU - they are preparing to open for summer.

seamus wrote: »

Correct.

The non-essential travel restriction only applies to one leaving their county.

We know this restriction will be lifted before or near the start of the Summer.

No.

https://www.dfa.ie/travel/travel-advice/coronavirus/general-covid-19-travel-advisory/
First line:

There is a Government Advisory in operation against all non-essential international travel.

The act:

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2021/si/29/made/en/print wrote:

“Restrictions of movement of applicable persons in relation to travel from place of residence to port or airport

4A. (1) Without prejudice to the generality of Regulation 4, and subject to paragraph (2), an applicable person shall not leave his or her place of residence to go to an airport or port for the purpose of leaving the State without reasonable excuse.

Its been extended a few times since that initial statute, current expiration date is sometime in May or June, it will likely be extended as the govt have repeatedly said international holidays are not on this summer. Hopefully they change their tune.