Quite a few people contacted me today to ask what it is like currently and what we are seeing.

It is completely different to the previous waves. Positives coming from everywhere and lots of reported sick people around each case. It is very serious.

Take my area. Mid-West- Limerick, Clare, North Tipp.

700 +ve swabs in a population of 390,000. That's about 0.2% of the population. The true number of infected who haven't been tested will be multiples of that.

In one day.

Nursing home outbreaks are establishing themselves, with the same sickeningly familiar mortality rates

Staff shortages are already near crisis. Already staffing is day by day.

They are weeks from being vaccinated.

We owe them more than this.

In Public Health we are almost completely prioritising outbreak management in healthcare settings to the exclusion of everything else.

We have stopped some of our complex contact tracing, to enable us to do this.

We need people to stay home. You are our last line of defence.