CONCERNS were raised that a funfair in Londonderry could lead to a localised spike of coronavirus cases, the city’s Mayor has said.
The fair at the Ebrington site ran for ten days from 11 September.
Derry’s Mayor Brian Tierney said council warned NI’s Executive Office, which owns the site, of the potential dangers of going ahead with the event.
The Executive Office has been asked for comment.
“(Derry City and Strabane District ) Council made representations to the Executive Office and made our concerns very, very clear around the dangers we could see because of a fun fair in the middle of a global pandemic,” Mr Tierney said.
He said council’s public health messaging was to “make sure we are doing all we can to limit the social interactions people have”.
Mr Tierney said he was not aware if the fair had any impact on the recent surge in cases in the north west.
At some point, he said, “it is important we do some sort of investigation”.
NI’s Chief Medical Officer Michael McBride said he had not been aware of the Derry fair.
“What I would say generally is that we’ve had regulations in place for some time, the regulations where people come together in gatherings outdoors, that those individual events are risk-assessed and there are requirements of the organisers of those events to have mitigations in place to prevent transmission,” he said.
Dr McBride added: “I can only assume that that was applied in this case but I just don’t know the details.”
There has been a sharp rise of confirmed cases over recent weeks in the north west.
Of the 1,082 cases in the Derry and Strabane council area since March, 801 were confirmed in the month of September.
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