Covid-19 related campaigns

Campaigns (16)

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  We need an All Ireland plan for Coronavirus

  The Coronavirus is beyond politics. Now is the time for all who live on this island, to stand together to face this common threat. An emergency plan must be put in place to protect us all, and prioritising those most at risk such as care home residents, asylum seekers, older people, and the homeless.

  34 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Nicola Browne
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  Save Renters From Eviction Because of Coronavirus

  This is a vital and very practical measure that will help so many people and is achievable if you get behind it in the real interests of social solidarity. Please get this sharing and signing and we'll get the Government to act immediately.

  288 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Peter Dooley
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  Take Private Hospitals Into Public Use To Deal With Covid-19 Emergency

  As the full scale of the public health challenge posed by the coronavirus becomes clear, there is cause for concern around the ability of the two tier health system to cope with the projected number of cases. In the Republic of Ireland there are 5.2 intensive care unit (ICU) beds per 100,000 people (249 total and a further 5.3 per 100k in the North). This is against an EU average of 11.5 ICU beds per 100k. In Italy, where the outbreak is currently at its worst, there are 12.5 ICU beds per 100k and Iran, there are 4.6 per 100k. In terms of ICU bed capacity, we are closer to Iran than we are to Italy or the European average. When it comes to ICU staffing - we have less than half the number of Intensive Care consultants that state-commissioned audits have recommended and a critical shortage of ICU nursing staff too. This is the legacy of underfunding in public healthcare and of failure by the traditional governing parties to take the concerns of frontline health professionals seriously. Private hospitals in the South have between 40 and 50 ICU beds, plus surgical beds that could be repurposed for intensive care in some cases. In a letter from the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) to members across Europe last week, Italian doctors reported roughly 10% of #Covid19 cases required ICU care. If cases approach the levels that epidemiological models predict, this would mean chaos for patients, staff and public health. Covid-19 is exposing private medicine for the sham it is. Private hospitals, insurers and pharmaceutical companies have profited off the erosion of the public system, while people suffer. We desperately need to move to a well-funded, single-tier national health service that takes care of people according to medical need and not the size of their wallets. To deal with this crisis, the state should immediately move to bring private ICU and other beds into public control to meet demand as cases increase. Private staff should be seconded to the public system as required and health professionals in the public system should be consulted to ensure adequate staffing and resources.

  7,486 of 8,000 Signatures
• Corona Virus Response Ireland - Roll out more testing now

  The Covid-19 epidemic has affected 100 countries worldwide, and has already killed several thousand people, and the WHO have stated the threat of a pandemic is very real. It is an unprecedented public health and economic event in the era of global travel and data sharing. Ireland is in a position of having the benefit of other countries' hindsight. We are in the early stages of an outbreak at under 100 cases (which is widely recognised as the tipping point between containment and mitigation). How we act now determines whether this outbreak spreads exponentially immediately and overwhelms our already problematic health service, or whether we manage to slow the rate of infection and spread out the impact on our health service over time, avoiding bottlenecks in patient care and resources that will prove more fatal than the illness itself, and avoiding widespread panic that can be more contagious than the virus. The WHO posits a possible doubling rate of 4 days, making it two weeks until the outbreak is too widespread to contain. It is stating the obvious to say that we cannot stop this infection from spreading. However we can slow it down and buy important time to make preparations, and eventually to develop a vaccination or sufficient herd immunity to protect the vulnerable (or in a more optimistic scenario to get to the end of the Flu season when it might abate). Comparing the outbreaks in different countries and rates of spread, together with their testing and containment measures, it is clear that countries like China, Singapore and South Korea that have managed to reduce infection rates through strong action on movement and aggressive testing protocol. It is widely recognised that in countries where containment failed, testing protocol was inadequate. It is now an acknowledged feature of Covid-19 that there are a large number of symptomless/mild symptom cases (estimated by the WHO to be up to 80%). This allows for subterranean community spreading under the radar in young healthy populations, which only becomes apparent when a spike in severe symptoms and pneumonia cases among the vulnerable appear. In Singapore broad testing criteria using a combination of PCR and antibody testing have enabled much more effective tracking of routes of infection and breaking of infection patterns. The HSE’s current testing criteria are when a person has symptoms of a fever, cough, shortness of breath/breathing difficulties AND the person has been to “an affected area” OR has been in contact with a confirmed case. https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/coronavirus/coronavirus.html This is dangerously narrow now that we have at least six cases of community transmission in Ireland not linked to travel or confirmed cases Reasonable restrictions on large gatherings such as those implemented in France (over 1000 people), together with broadening of testing protocol to a much greater degree than being operated currently would go a long way to get a better picture of low symptom or asymptomatic cases. Testing should be made widely available, even to people with only mild symptoms. Also antibody testing should be carried out to reverse engineer routes of infection. Testing protocol should be expanded to include anyone with a fever OR with respiratory symptoms without a requirement for known contacts or travel to affected areas. This is more in line with the strategy recommended by the WHO in their WHO-China Joint Mission on Covid-19 on pg.19 where they emphasise the urgent need for non-pharmaceutical measures in the early stages of an outbreak of the virus: “Fundamental to these measures is extremely proactive surveillance to immediately detect cases, very rapid diagnosis and immediate case isolation, rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts, and an exceptionally high degree of population understanding and acceptance of these measures.” https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf We call on the Minister for Health Simon Harris to act now to minimise the immediate lethality of this outbreak and thereby mitigating also its economic impact in the long term in Ireland.

  75 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Alison Hough
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  Cancel the 2020 St Patrick's Day Parades in Ireland to help reduce the spread of COVID-19

  The number of cases of COVID-19 in Ireland is rising at a rapid rate and the HSE won’t have the structure to deal with a crisis in our island. HSE CEO Paul Reid admitted he “can’t dispute” claims that up to 1.9m people in Ireland could become infected. Due to the delay in the spread of COVID-19 in Ireland, there is an opportunity to prevent new infections by cancelling the scheduled St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Ireland. If we do not take the economic hit not, there will be an even larger economic hit down the road, and possible a loss of life.

  3 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Gustavo Silva
• Dublin
  

  Cancel St. Patrick's celebration

  In order to prevent a similar scenario in Ireland I would like to ask everybody to sign a petition to the Irish Government as well as the HSE to cancel a mass event coming up soon St. Partick's Day . Italy cancels Venice Carnival amid coronavirus crisis. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/italy-cancels-venice-carnival-amid-coronavirus-crisis-third-person-dies/a-52488725

  578 of 600 Signatures

  Created by Sylwia Majcher