A leading health expert is urging officials to set their sights on completely eliminating COVID-19 from the island of Ireland.

The lockdown, announced in late-March, was aimed at ‘flattening the curve’ of the virus to prevent the country’s hospitals becoming overwhelmed.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning however, Dr Anthony Staines, Professor of Health Systems at DCU, said officials should now focus on an attempt to ‘crush the curve’ across the island.

“I am proposing that we now move on from the emergency response that we have had," he said.

"The very successful emergency response that has got the number of new cases down to low levels and very fortunately, the number of deaths down to low levels – still very sad but low – and make a decision that we want to get rid of this virus.

“As the phrase goes, we want to crush the curve rather than flatten it – and we do this in partnership with our good partners in Northern Ireland.”

Pictures (l to r) are Chris lythe, Garden Centre Seasonal Manager and Mavis Akoetah, floor staff at B&Q in Naas, County Kildare preparing for reopening, 16-05-2020. Image: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews

It comes as thousands of businesses reopen their doors this morning as part of Phase One of the reopening roadmap.

Meanwhile, garden centres and recycling plants are re-opening in the North with further restrictions to be lifted later this week.

Dr Staines said Dublin and Belfast should agree to slow down the re-opening and “make a commitment not to fully reopen our economies until the circulating cases are down to zero and staying at zero.”

He said the current plans will see the virus impacting “on our work, on our lives, on our health service and on our economy” indefinitely.

“It is now time to shift the conversation from the emergency response which was on both sides of the border to a coordinated discussion about, what do we do next?” he said.

“Do we say this is going to be with us forever, a but like influenza, and that next winter we are going to have our health services badly damaged by having COVID-19 and influenza circulating at the same time?”

“Or do we say that we want to give a little bit of a lead for Europe and show that this can be removed?”

DCU Professor Anthony Staines

The plan would involve long-term quarantining of everyone that comes into the country and far deeper damage to the economy than has already been done; however, Dr Staines said “other European Countries are going to be asking themselves the same question.”

“I think this is a discussion that is going to get wider and wider and because we are an island, we have an advantage, we can show ways of doing this,” he said.

You can listen back to the full interview here: