Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 24 February 2021
833. Deputy Carol Nolan asked the Minister for Health if there is specific data available on the contribution that attendance at religious services and public worship has made to the R number with respect to Covid-19; if so, if he will make that data available; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9704/21]
View answerR is estimated at the population level. Modelling the specific impact of attendance at religious services and public worship on the R number is not in the scope of the work of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (IEMAG), a sub-group of NPHET. It is in theory possible to ‘model’ the effect of specific restrictions or policy changes on the overall reproduction number. However, in order to do so one must make a series of assumptions about the number of close contacts that occur in a setting, the number of close contacts that occur in the population as a whole, the relative risk that such close contacts lead to infection, and the effect of mitigating measures such as the use of PPE. Small changes in these assumptions lead to very different outcomes in terms of impact upon R. IEMAG is of the view that it is not feasible to provide reliable estimates of the impact on R of very specific interventions.
Technical notes on the approaches used to estimate effective reproduction number (Re) or time-dependent reproduction number (Rt) are published on the Department of Health website (https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/dc5711-irish-epidemiology-modelling-advisory-group-to-nphet-technical-notes/). The approaches used are in line with best practice and associated references are available in the above mentioned published technical notes.
