Mullingar Professor Kingston Mills has this week spoken to Topic about his views regarding the progress made by the people of Ireland in terms of slowing down the spread of Covid-19 and he told Topic, of ways in which he believes a resurgence of the disease can be avoided.
By Claire Corrigan
Prof. Mills, said, he believes that sport can resume and people can return to different activities in their lives without having to wait for a vaccine, which may or may not come. Prof. Mills said that the procurement of a vaccine should not dictate when and if life returns to normal.
“I’ve heard it said, particularly in the sporting world, that certain things won’t resume until we have a vaccine and I’ve said this to other journalists that this is crazy: the idea that we would wait for a vaccine that might never come. Suppose the epidemic disappears in six months to a year without a vacccine becoming available? Are we still going to wait until the vaccine comes before resuming normal life?” he opined.
“So they are backing themselves into a corner with this idea that you have to have a vaccine to resume normal activity. I am a great believer in the benefits of vaccination, but I’m also a realist and I know it’s not simple to make a vaccine. We might make one and we might not. The epidemic might resolve without a vaccine – if it does, there’s no reason we can’t get back to working and sporting activities.
“Things like the running community, which I used to be involved with; there’s no reason why they can’t resume activity, certainly in terms of training and small races. Football might be slower to come on board as there is more contact. For bigger professional sports games, it could be of benefit just to test players and coaching staff in advance of playing and let them play if they’re all negative. Obviously that will curtail the spectator side of it but I think a lot of us would like to see sport back on our TV even without spectators,” he added.
Mr. Mills is Professor of Experimental Immunology, School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He is head of the centre for the study of Immunology at Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute and theme champion for Immunology, Inflammation and Infection at TCD. “The number of cases has gone down significantly and the number of deaths has also gone down which is very encouraging and suggests that the transmission has been slowed in the community because of the lockdown measures. If things get worse, they need to make the measures more stringent and if things are better, they need to relax them a bit more. It has to be played as you see it. We have to wait and see what happens when the measures are eased. If you look at what happened in China and Korea, they managed to almost eliminate it from the country but then they relaxed measures probably a little bit too quickly and there was a resurgence in the last few days and weeks- with Korea probably due to the fact they opened up nightclubs and bars and with China, probably because of international travel,” he remarked. Professor Mills has concerns about suggestions that air travel can resume from 1 July (it was announced earlier this month that Ryanair is to resume operating up to 40% of its normal flight schedule from that date).
“I don’t know where that date is coming from. The issue around international travel is very simple- this is probably the one area that is likely to be conducive to the spread of the virus, being in an aircraft, simply because it is a confined space with recirculated air and the fact you are bringing people from other countries where they may not be doing as well. If we are one of the countries that get the numbers down to very low levels, we have effectively controlled the pandemic. Other countries don’t do so well and fly into here and they are really just going to reimport the problem. I don’t think it’s a matter of saying everything is alright in July and we will resume flights. I think the Government needs to make that decision not Ryanair. The Government needs to say we will resume international travel when it’s safe to do so and for countries when it’s safe to do so, and not to be dictated by airlines on this.”
Professor Mills said that while low risk industries such as construction and farming are set to resume, there is no reason why other businesses could not also open safely, if they take the necessary precautions. He added that the pandemic could spell a sea change in terms of how people work in general. “The building industry, farming, all of those outdoor activities have virtually no risk or minimum risk so there is no reason why they can’t resume. Even other shops, other than food shops and pharmacies, should be able to open. Garages have remained open throughout this. Places like bicycle repair shops- those are simple things where it would be very easy to put in place measures to social distance. Even manufacturing industries where you have a sensible approach to keeping people apart and people wearing masks too would help. I’d be optimistic that a lot of business could get back to work. Your business and my business where we would spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer, can still be done from home and there is no reason that it would have to be done from an office. I think you will see a lot of people working from home where possible for the next while and it may change our whole approach to work going forward permanently. People will spend less time commuting and more time at home working when they can. Businesses can get back by being innovative about it and I don’t think there are any particular dangers in some of the things that I’m suggesting.”
Professor Mills was one of the first public figures to speak out regarding his views that flights from Italy should be suspended and all large scale events cancelled back in late February. “Travel was certainly one thing that led to the situation we’re in now and the procrastination surrounding that. They never really put in place the stringent measures and restrictions- they left it up to the individuals to self isolate and we saw what happened recently with the forms and that just 37 per cent of people were not filling them out. Because it wasn’t a mandatory requirement, there was no onus on people to comply with it. It was the same with the St Patrick’s Day parade and there was many saying that it couldn’t be cancelled while many of us were saying that it must be cancelled. Its all about common sense and if you travel, you risk contracting it and carrying it and transmitting so we need to be sensible going forward and when we do get this thing under control, fully, and we’ve seen great progress. Travel is one area we just cannot ease off on too quickly or we’ll be back to square one again. The elephant in the room in terms of borders is the North. The UK have slightly different policies to us and maybe slightly more relaxed, if you can say that. Northern Ireland have now accepted that they need slightly different policies to the rest of the UK and that’s an advantage but I think we need to be working very closely together with the North on this because if we don’t, we’re going to have a problem again.”
