Michael McBride hails 'highly effective' effort to drive down COVID-19 in Derry; justifies closure of bars and hairdressers

Dr. McBride, addressing the Stormont Health Committee this morning, congratulated the wider community in Derry and Strabane for acting to reduce the R number below 1.

"The interventions we have now put in place have been effective. We saw the highly effective interventions in Derry City and Strabane council and well done to everybody in the community for coming together and achieving that because it was a real effort between community leaders, political leaders, the business sector, working with community networks and we are making very significant progress in pressing down R with the latest restrictions that the Executive has put in place," he said.

With the Executive meeting this morning to decide whether or not to extend or lift restrictions on certain sectors such as hospitality and close personal services like hairdressing next week Dr. McBride said he understood it was a difficult a time for people working in these industries.

"For those working in the sector I realise how difficult a time this has been and we are trying to balance both lives and livelihoods and I know how distressing and anxious a time it has been for those working in many sectors, in hospitality, retail and in close personal services.

"The difficulty with this virus is that it is highly transmissable and it spreads best when people come close together and the more people that are close together, particularly indoors, the easier it is for the virus to spread.

"It's also particularly problematic, as we know, with all these coronaviruses at this time of the year, with the cooler climate and less sunlight the virus survives for longer and what we have had to do prior to the availability of more effective treatments and vaccines is to reduce the contacts between people to reduce the transmission of the virus," said Dr. McBride.

The CMO said that each intervention the Executive has implemented has put 'downward pressure' on the R number.

Dr. McBride said the enforced closure of hairdressers and barbers has had a major impact on driving down the transmission rate.

He explained: "So whilst close personal services may only constitute 0.05 that actually is a very significant percentage contribution to the reduction in the R number because what we are trying to do is get the R number below 1 and keep it as far below one for as long as we possibly can because as long as we keep it below one that means fewer people are being infected and we will see the rates of infection fall.

"We'll see the rates and numbers of people who are being admitted to our hospitals and our ICUs fall. We'll see the outbreaks in our care homes fall. We'll see less staff off isolating because they themselves have acquired COVID-19 and again as we saw during the summer months, unfortunately, it's a fact that when we relax measures we have a situation when R in June was somewhere in the region of 0.5 to 0.7 and then over the course of time when we relaxed measures and allowed some sectors to open up we had a situation where by October R had got to between 1.4 and 1.6."

Dr. McBride said he accepted people were fed up with the ongoing restrictions that were due to end next week but may be extended for a further period.

"I can only apologise to everyone for the pain and the distress and the anxiety that I know everyone is experiencing at this time and hopefully into the new year and into the spring things will look different to what they are at present," he declared.