Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Brexit Britain should help vaccinate Ireland

I’m worried about Ireland. My family’s homeland is being ravaged by Covid-19. It now has the highest infection rate in the world, according to the expert Covid-watchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Ireland’s seven-day rolling average is an eye-watering 1,394 Covid cases per million people. That is way ahead of the UK (810 per million), the US (653 per million) and Germany (248 per million).

It has been a sudden and startling decline. Back at the start of December, following a six-week lockdown, Ireland had the lowest infection rate in the European Union. Now it has the highest in the world.

Many of the newest infections — around 45 per cent — are of the new variant that was first identified in the south east of England. To give a taste of how bad the Irish situation is, get this: around 46,000 people in Ireland have become infected in the past seven days, which is more than the total number of infections in the country between March and October.

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