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Ireland to Impose 5km Travel Limit in Strict New Covid Lockdown

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday October 25 2020, @10:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the second-wave dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Ireland to impose 5km travel limit in strict new Covid lockdown:

Ireland is to close much of its economy and society in a second Covid-19 lockdown that imposes some of the severest restrictions in Europe.

Non-essential shops will close and people are asked to stay at home, with a 5km (3 mile) travel limit for exercise, to curb surging infection rates, the government announced on Monday evening.

From midnight on Wednesday the country will move to its highest lockdown tier for six weeks. Visits to private homes or gardens will not be permitted and there are to be no gatherings except for tightly controlled weddings and funerals.

A graduated fine system for those who breach the 5km travel limit – with exceptions for work and other purposes deemed essential – will be announced later this week. People who live alone or are parenting alone can pair with one other household as part of a support bubble. Two households can meet outdoors within the travel limit. Public transport will operate at 25% capacity.

Non-essential retail will close along with barbers' shops, beauty salons, gyms, leisure centres and cultural amenities. Pubs, cafes and restaurants will be allowed to serve takeout meals only, a devastating blow to an already weakened hospitality sector.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @03:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @03:51PM (#1069323)

    I agree, I can't see mask wearing being successful for school children - even reasonably old ones. In UK this issue has been mitigated by stopping school children moving between year groups and class groups.

    Except it has been (at least here [nytimes.com]) successful:

    Out of 16,348 staff members and students tested randomly by the school system in the first week of its testing regimen, the city has gotten back results for 16,298. There were only 28 positives: 20 staff members and eight students.

    That's a 0.17% (zero point one seven percent) positive rate. Which is ~6x less than the overall positive test rates in NYC.

    What's more, as of *yesterday (26 October 2020), there have been 892 positive tests among staff (488) and students (404) [nyc.gov].

    And since ~26% (286,000) of NYC school students are participating in in-person learning [nytimes.com], that's a 0.14% (zero point one four percent) positive rate among students. Even more, if you add in the staff numbers of positive cases (although it's somewhat less because I don't have numbers of staff to add to the total population, but let's go with it anyway) that's still only 0.31% (zero point three one percent).

    So yes, it *can* be successful. If it can be successful in the most densely populated city in the US, it can be successful across the US, but *if, and only if* both the schools and the larger community work together to protect each other via aggressive testing/tracing and isolation of those who are infected.