Christmas socialising is being blamed for the country’s shocking rise in infection rates
Ireland recently made the headlines all over the world – for the wrong reason. We had the highest daily number of new confirmed cases of Covid-19 anywhere. The seven-day rolling average hit 1,394 cases per million – ahead of the UK on 810, and the US on 653.
We had been doing so well. On 13 December the chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan, announced that Ireland had the lowest number of cases per capita in Europe. We felt pretty good about ourselves. So how did it all go so wrong, and in such a short time? You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to figure it out.