Nobody wants to talk about Belmullet: why?
Last week an article appeared in the Irish Times about the extraordinary case loads that occured in the LEA of Belmullet in Mayo. Mayo, as some might know, had one of the lowest Covid 19 caseloads in the country until December of 2020. On 14th Jan, RTE reported that the town had the highest level in the country : 6000 cases per 100,000 of population. In other words, 1 in 17 people. In the area, 760 people had tested positive in the previous weeks. The area takes in the town of Belmullet (c.1000), Achill (c.2500) and about 8000 others in West Mayo. The surge began in Christmas week with 266 cases reported in the last 2 weeks of December. Yet the media stayed silent. On 22nd Jan, Irish Times chimed in with a detailed, and honest evaluation of the situation in Belmullet , including discussions with public health experts in Mayo and Galway, who all expressed the same thing: the problem resulted from a particular pattern of socialising in the area, which included a s...