The former chief medical officer (CMO), Dr Tony Holohan has said that there was no pandemic plan that could have predicted what was witnessed over the last two or more years.
He told a conference in Dublin that public health practitioners, scientists and policy makers came up with different proposals on how to proceed.
Dr Holohan said these in turn had to be reconciled against economic and political considerations, as was the case here.
He said that Covid-19 was a new disease, much more transmissible than influenza and more severe.
He said there were no drugs to treat it, no vaccines to prevent it and no natural immunity from previous viral variants.
Dr Holohan said Ireland had to reduce the number of people who contracted it in the first place and buy time for science to develop vaccines and treatments.
He said that in the media, there was a desire to try to oversimplify Covid-19 but there was no silver bullet to deal with it.
He was speaking at a Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland medical professionalism conference in Dublin.
It was one of his first public events since he retired as CMO last summer.
The Dublin conference was supported by the Bon Secours Health System and the Medical Protection Society.
