A leading infectious disease specialist has said he expects to see the two-metre social distancing guideline reduced so children can return to school.

It comes amid reports the rule will be relaxed for pubs and restaurants from next month.

On Newstalk Breakfast with Susan Keogh this morning, Dr Gabriel Fitzpatrick, Medical Director of Trinity Clinics, said the next stage of the virus response will be all about the “balance of risk.”

“Most likely over the next six months we will see that distance reduced,” he said.

“You have a greater than 90% chance of not catching something if you stay two metres away from somebody.

“If you go drop it one metre it drops to around 75% to 80% reduced risk of catching something.

“However, it goes back to the basic point of balancing controlling the virus with living our lives. If we have got a situation where maintaining a two-metre distance prevents our schools from opening in September, that to me is not a fair balance of risk.”

Child development

He warned that the prolonged closure of schools is likely to have an impact on many children’s development and said there can be “no excuses for something as basic as allowing our children back to school come September.”

“Schools are a protective, beneficial place for our children so, in my opinion, schools should have been open much earlier,” he said. “They definitely should have been opened from the beginning of June.”

“We are not saying there is no risk with opening schools. We are just saying, on the balance of risk, it is more beneficial for our society to allow children back to school than to keep them shut in order to keep the virus completely suppressed.”

Targeted response

Dr Fitzpatrick also warned that the State must be prepared to respond to any outbreaks on a school-by-school basis when children do return.

“Say schools reopen in September and there is an outbreak in a certain school – that does not mean that we shut every school in the country,” he said.

“We need an intelligent response where our resources are focused on that school and surrounding schools – so there is tracking, testing, tracing and isolation of cases.

“But it doesn’t mean that, if there’s an outbreak in Balbriggan, we shut every school along the west coast of Ireland.

“We need to be local and intelligent in our response to the outbreak as we move through the phases of removing the lockdown.”

Dr Fitzpatrck also said he expects to see face masks made mandatory on public transport and in situations where social distancing is impossible in the coming months.