Young people shouldn’t be blamed for Covid spread, says Dr Tony Holohan

Young people shouldn't be blamed for transmitting the coronavirus, Dr Tony Holohan has said.

Despite younger generations taking some flak for the rise in cases of Covid-19, the Chief Medical Officer doesn't think they should be condemned.

"If young people pick up this infection, and they happen to bring it home, this is a very transmissible infection... it's not their fault, that they're not to blame for the infection," he said. "It's very important for us to say, let's all accept responsibility for our individual behaviour but let's stop blaming each other for the transmission of an infection that's twice as easy to transmit from person to person as flu."

Appearing on The Late Late Show on RTE One, Dr Holohan spoke about being father to an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old. He said that he knows from his own life that the burden of stopping the spread has been "very significant" on young people.

"Almost anything that they do - school, college, hanging out with friends, dating going to nightclubs, going to the pub when they shouldn't and travelling - these are things that they look forward to. "So they've had to shoulder, in many ways, that age group, a huge burden of the ask. "Yes we've had a huge challenge in terms of people losing jobs and people and obviously losing loved ones so challenges have expressed themselves in different ways for different people but (for) the 19 to 24-year-olds, it's been really difficult."

Continuing, Dr Holohan said that he's not surprised that people may now being taking restrictions less seriously.

"Their lives have changed in every way and the risk to them, they will feel, of the infection is very limited and so it doesn't surprise me in sense that many of them have thrown their hat at it and said, we don't want to hear this anymore."