Mayo GP calls for rethink on keeping second level schools open during Level 5

A Mayo general practitioner has called for a rethink in respect of keeping secondary schools open during Level 5 restrictions.

Dr. Jerry Cowley, a former TD, told the Irish Times that he referred 29 of his patients for Covid tests last Wednesday alone.

He said he believed wet pubs were the “Trojan horse which allowed Covid back into the community."

The Mulranny-based GP also questioned the consensus that schools must remain open at all costs, stating “schools have definitely been a factor in the slippage that has occurred."

Calling for the situation regarding schools to be kept under review, Dr Cowley told the newspaper that people might argue that young children were not spreaders but this was not the case with teenagers.

“I think we should have a re-think in relation to secondary schools. This is a very devious virus. We should not have hard and fast rules. We cannot be ruling things in or out."

He said there was no doubt that there had been a steep rise in the virus within the community, with older people now being affected.

“It is in the community now and so it will go to older people, who have been magnificent and who have been protecting themselves.

"They want to live and a lot of older people have been cocooning since March because they are dead scared”.

Dr, Cowley said that even though there had been a lot of tourists in the Mulranny-Achill area over the summer, people had “behaved themselves” but once wet pubs opened “that was the beginning of the end” as “social distancing got less important with every pint."