The Coronavirus outbreak shows no signs of slowing down and the news that there was a confirmed case of COVID-19 in Ireland last weekend has led to a secondary school in the east of the country closing for two weeks. Deirdre, a parent at the school, spoke to Damien O'Reilly on Liveline about her daughter, a pupil at the school, who's currently self-isolating at home. Deirdre described how her daughter's isolation works:

"She's not to go out. She can have contact for up to 15 minutes with others in the household, even though it's not advised, but, if needs be. But she can't go out."

The parents of children at the school received the news of a confirmed case among the pupils late on Sunday afternoon. Deirdre's daughter's self-isolation makes life pretty awkward for the family's daily life:

"She has to use her own towel, use her own soap. If she comes down to the kitchen – she'd be mostly eating in her bedroom now, we're trying to avoid her coming down, but if she does, her utensils and all have to be washed and wash down any counters that she touched or breathed on. So, keep everything clean and sanitised, is what we've been told to do."

Deirdre's daughter has a cough, but, she told Damien, the medical people won't start worrying until or unless she gets all of the three main symptoms: a dry cough, fever and breathlessness:

"Before they'd be having major concerns, they kinda expect you to have more than one symptom, but it can take a period of time for symptoms to show and they don't know if you're contagious before you're showing symptoms."

Deirdre told Damien that her daughter has not been tested and, as far as she knows, no one else from the school has been tested. This is because, according to the HSE, testing too early can lead to a false negative.

"So you kind of need to wait out the incubation period and wait for symptoms to appear before they recommend testing."

There was a meeting for parents of pupils on Monday night and Deirdre told Damien that the atmosphere there was tense. It was a long meeting, attended by a panel of experts to answer questions, but despite this, there was a lot of frustration:

"There was a lot of, 'nobody really knows'."

Although her daughter has been in close proximity to the pupil who has tested positive for COVID-19, Deirdre isn't overly worried for her or the rest of the family, as they're all healthy, but she is worried about the possible spread of the disease.

"There were a lot of parents there who have other family members at home in the household with diseases and have had major health issues and immunodeficiencies and are on medication and all. It's so high risk for them."

Deirdre also told Damien how she was unhappy that she heard on social media that her daughter's school was closing as a result of a positive COVID-19 case before she received an email from the HSE informing her of the news. And you can hear the full conversation here.

Niall Ó Sioradáin