During October Belgium experienced Europe's most alarming escalation in new Covid cases while Irish officials were claiming, accurately, that incidence here had been falling faster than in other European countries.
These positions have been fully reversed and Belgium has had no third wave at all. Ireland was reported early last week as experiencing the fastest virus spread in the world. The arrival in waves of the Covid-19 virus is not an inexorable law of nature; it reflects the behavioural response of the public, both to disease prevalence and to the changing public health measures adopted by governments.
On October 4, Nphet advised a pre-emptive tightening of restrictions to Level 5, alarmed by the incipient rise in new case numbers. The Government resisted, Nphet repeated the advice on October 16 and extra measures were eventually implemented on October 21, helping to reverse the second wave.