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Eire turns to vaccine passes to reopen its hospitality trade

Ireland turns to vaccine passes to reopen its hospitality industry

People love to drink Guinness outside a pub in Dublin city center. On Monday 5th July 2021 in Dublin, Ireland.

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DUBLIN – Despite the spread of the highly contagious Delta Coronavirus variant, Ireland is relying on “vaccine passports” to fully reopen its bars and restaurants.

Ireland’s tourism and hospitality industry has grappled with stop-and-start reopening during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Office work resumed on July 26th in a kind of photo finish, with the government and hospitality industry setting the guidelines for the reopening that morning. This included final adjustments to the restaurant’s contact tracking requirements.

The main differentiator this time around is that restaurants and bars are only allowed to open their doors to fully vaccinated people or people who have recovered from Covid-19 in the last six months. Outdoor seating remains available to all visitors.

The big test for businesses will be doing these customer vaccination checks.

The main means of proof of vaccination will be the EU’s digital Covid certificate, the same document on which Europe is pinning its hopes for revitalizing tourism on the continent.

Restaurants and bars are expected to scan the QR code on the certificate and check a customer’s ID to make sure they are fully vaccinated.

Noel Anderson is the managing director of Dublin restaurants Lemon & Duke and The Bridge 1859 and chairman of the trading association of the Licensed Vintners Association.

He told CNBC that in the first few days of reopening, customers are still opting for outdoor seating, but his staff have been trained on the new protocols, especially as the summer weather wears off.

“I firmly believe that this will be over in two or three weeks and that this will just be the norm. Hopefully it won’t be the norm for too long, ”he said.

He and many other hospitality businesses declined to request vaccination controls on the door.

“Ultimately, this was a government initiative. This was not being pushed by the pubs, but by the LVA, of which I am chairman, we didn’t want that,” he said.

“Either you want to stay closed until September and beyond, or that’s how you open it. When you have members who are closed [for over a year], you have no choice but to take it. “

data protection

The requirement of a vaccination certificate for entering a company premises has generated some criticism, as it is claimed that it is discriminatory for unvaccinated people, while so-called vaccination cards or passports can also be difficult initiatives for data protection and security reasons.

A spokesman for the Irish Data Protection Commission said hospitality companies need to be careful about the amount of data they collect and process and delete unneeded information.

“Owners / operators should not keep records that identify named people and details of their vaccinations or copies of certificates or identification documents as this is not required to meet their compliance obligations,” the DPC said.

The processing of personal data must be “justified on the basis of necessity and proportionality,” it said.

“The DPC has also made it clear that Covid-related laws must be time-bound and limited by sunset clauses to the duration of the pandemic in order to prevent excessive and disproportionate processing of personal data.”

Ireland won’t be an outlier in Europe for long when it comes to vaccine passports in the hospitality industry, as France and Italy are introducing similar requirements for entering bars, restaurants and cafes.

Careful approach

Not every bar and every restaurant wants to reopen its office staff. Pantibar, a popular Dublin gay bar, has chosen to keep its office doors closed as most of its young employees are not yet fully vaccinated.

Another restaurateur, Barry McNerney, told CNBC that his Juniors and Paulie’s Pizza restaurants are not yet struggling to reopen indoors.

“I don’t know if the demand for indoor dining is very high. A lot of places have a young clientele, many of them wouldn’t be vaccinated so they couldn’t really eat inside.”

McNerney decided to wait and see how other companies deal with the new protocols and vaccine controls before diving in.

“We see how other operators are coping and then learn from them what the logistical challenges are.”

Despite the gradual reopening of the economy, many companies in Ireland are still threatened with rising numbers of Covid cases. The number of cases has risen steadily in the last few weeks, driven by the delta variant, with average daily numbers over 1,000.

The continued reopening of the hospitality industry has been criticized compared to the staggering spike in cases where Christmas restrictions were eased in late December, ultimately leading to lockdowns well into spring.

One key difference with the Christmas push is that vaccine rollout in Ireland is moving fast after a stuttering start earlier in the year. As of Friday, 3.2 million people had received at least one dose of the vaccine, 2.4 million of whom had received a double dose. The vaccination program has recently been expanded to include those under the age of 18.

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Health

Eire needs distant working to now revive its rural cities

Ireland wants remote working to now revive its rural towns

Terrace of historic shops and buildings, Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland, Irish Republic. (Photo by: Geography Photos / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Geography Photos | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

DUBLIN – In March the Irish government unveiled a plan to revitalize the country’s rural economy by encouraging more people to work remotely.

A longstanding challenge for rural Ireland has been migration to urban areas. With the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic and what can be achieved through remote working, the Our Rural Future plan aims to encourage more people to stay in or move to non-urban areas.

The plan is to provide financial support to local authorities to convert vacant properties in cities into remote work centers. This includes a plan for “over 400 remote workplaces” across the country.

Grainne O’Keeffe has firsthand experience attracting people to a rural town. She heads the Ludgate Hub, a start-up collaboration and support organization in the small town of Skibbereen, about 80 km west of the city of Cork in southern Ireland.

Ludgate Hub – named after scientist Percy Ludgate – was founded in 2016 and has been a pioneer in rural start-up efforts.

O’Keeffe told CNBC that Ludgate is a practical example of attracting founders and employees to a small town.

It works in an old bakery and opens a second facility in an empty school building later that year. It has mostly drawn people whose startups have the option to work remotely, including the Eric Yuan-backed start-up Workvivo.

O’Keeffe said significant investments in physical infrastructure like high-speed broadband and the procurement of suitable buildings are key to making any city viable for remote working.

Skibbereen is connected to high-speed broadband through a Vodafone-owned company called Siro.

“This is without a doubt a game changer for any region. That is fundamental, as is a building that is conducive to a work environment,” she said.

The rural broadband connection was a regular mistake in Ireland. The government’s National Broadband Plan provides for the introduction of services in previously underserved areas, but has experienced a fair amount of delays. Other operators like Eir are in the middle of their own rural rollouts while Elon Musk’s Starlink is testing at a location in Ireland.

working environment

Garret Flower moved from Dublin to his hometown of Longford on the Central Plateau. He is the managing director of the software start-up ParkOffice, whose team of 15 has now been completely removed.

“The landscape has so much to offer,” he said. “I think remote working can really bring people back to the rural areas.”

But he also warned against excessive reliance on home work. As lockdowns eventually wear off, the availability of office space or desks in towns and villages will be a key component of any strategy, he said.

“Not everyone has a comfortable living area to work in. You can’t put this pressure on everyone to work from home. I grew up in the family home and it was a mess. I could never have worked with everyone there. ” in the house, “he said.

Separately, a government-funded start-up accelerator called NDRC, now operated by a consortium of business groups across the country, is focused on developing start-up ecosystems in different regions of the country.

One of its members is the RDI Hub, a facility in the town of Killorglin, County Kerry, in the southwest of the country.

“In Kerry we have traditionally had a very deeply rooted migration. People are leaving Kerry. It seldom happens that you stay, most people go to college, most go to start a job. Some come back, but they do The majority go and carry on. ” said Reidin O’Connor, the manager of RDI Hub.

Originally from the area, O’Connor moved with her partner and children from Dublin a few months before the pandemic.

She said the government’s efforts to create remote work centers need to focus not only on workers, but also on how they can be integrated into local communities.

“Hubs should be where your startups and your creatives work together. But you also have classes and it becomes the beehive of the community and this is where people gather,” she said.

PA Thompson | The image database | Getty Images

Housing and transportation

Housing construction is a persistent problem for the development of a region in Ireland. Before the pandemic, the housing shortage was a hot topic for a long time. However, since the outbreak of the pandemic, the problem has worsened as construction ceased.

Recently, institutional investing activity in the real estate market has generated much public contempt.

Ludgate’s O’Keeffe said that rural revitalization efforts are grappling with housing and that authorities such as county councils “need to recognize that the population is increasing and that housing is needed”.

O’Keeffe admits that transport links between rural towns like Skibbereen and nearby towns like Cork or further afield in Dublin are also challenges.

“It is certainly a problem we have for ourselves, this remoteness, but I think digital activation is reducing the physical divide,” she said, adding that narrowing the digital divide can help address deficiencies in the physical Fix infrastructure such as transport links.

Flower said there was a significant opportunity to revive large parts of the land that might otherwise be forgotten.

“A shipload of my friends in the last recession left for Australia and Canada and didn’t come back. We need to put pictures in people’s heads so they can come back and do these world-class jobs in remote areas of the country.”

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Business

Eire, Netherlands droop AstraZeneca vaccine amid blood clot fears

Ireland, Netherlands suspend AstraZeneca vaccine amid blood clot fears

A medical worker fills a syringe with AstraZeneca vaccine at Santa Caterina da Siena – Amendola secondary school in Salerno on March 13, 2021 in Salerno, Italy.

Francesco Pecoraro | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON – Ireland and the Netherlands have joined the growing list of countries that have stopped using the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University because of blood clot concerns.

The Dutch government said Sunday that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine would not be used until March 29, while Ireland said earlier in the day it had temporarily suspended the shot as a precautionary measure.

The World Health Organization tried to downplay the ongoing safety concerns and stated last week that there was no link between the shot and an increased risk of developing blood clots. The United Nations Health Department has urged countries to continue using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Even so, some European countries have already stopped using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It added to the worries of the battered vaccination campaign in the region when the German health department warned that a third wave of coronavirus infections had already begun.

Thailand has also stopped the planned use of the vaccine.

The move to suspend use by Dutch and Irish officials came shortly after the Norwegian Medicines Agency announced that three health workers were hospitalized for bleeding, blood clots and low platelet counts after receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Norway has suspended its vaccination program against Oxford-AstraZeneca.

Geir Bukholm, director of the Infection Control and Environmental Health Department at the Norwegian Public Health Institute, said the Norwegian Medicines Agency will “follow up on these suspected side effects and take the necessary action in this serious situation”.

The picture taken on November 27, 2020 shows “Nikki” Anniken Hars treating a Covid-19 patient in the intensive care unit of Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet in Oslo, Norway.

JIL YNGLAND | AFP | Getty Images

The European Medicines Agency, the European Medicines Agency, also said there is no evidence that Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine causes blood clots and that the vaccine’s benefits “continue to outweigh the risks”.

The EMA admitted that some European countries had stopped using the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, but said vaccinations may continue to be given while a clot investigation is ongoing.

How did AstraZeneca react?

“A careful review of all available safety data from more than 17 million people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in the European Union (EU) and the UK found no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis ( DVT) or thrombocytopenia in a certain age group, gender, group or country, “AstraZeneca said in a statement on Sunday.

The most common side effects of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, which does not contain the virus and cannot cause Covid, are usually mild or moderate and improve within a few days after vaccination.

A health worker holds a box of the AstraZeneneca vaccine at the Bamrasnaradura Institute for Infectious Diseases in Nonthaburi Province on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Chaiwat subprasome | SOPA pictures | LightRocket via Getty Images

The pharmaceutical company said that 15 events involving deep vein thrombosis and 22 events involving pulmonary embolism were reported among those vaccinated in the EU and the United Kingdom.

“This is much less than expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size, and it is similar to other approved COVID-19 vaccines,” said AstraZeneca.

What do the experts say?

“Covid definitely causes bleeding disorders and each of the vaccines prevents Covid disease, including more severe cases,” said Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

“Therefore, it is highly likely that the vaccine’s benefits will significantly outweigh the risk of clotting disorders, and the vaccine will prevent other consequences of Covid, including deaths from other causes.”

Evans said it was “perfectly reasonable” to conduct studies on vaccines and coagulation disorders, but added, “It seems a step too far to take precautionary measures that would prevent people from receiving vaccines that prevent disease.”

Many high-income countries – such as the UK, France, Australia and Canada – have decided to continue rolling out the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

“When there is clear evidence of serious or life-threatening side effects that have important consequences,” Adam Finn, professor of pediatrics at Bristol University, said in a statement.

“So far, however, this has not been the case, and it is highly undesirable to disrupt a complex and urgent program every time people, after receiving a vaccine, develop illnesses that are random and not causal. In situations like this, it is not easy to Making the right call, but a steady hand on the tiller is probably what is needed most, “said Finn.