26 September 2022
By Mary Bermingham
mary@TheCork.ie
Professor Luke O’Neill immunologist and Cathal Friel will bring their expertise and insights in infectious diseases around Ireland next week, as they host a series of fireside chats in 4 Cities. The Cork event will take place at The Dean Hotel, Railway Street Cork City on Wednesday 28th September. Registation link here.
Prof O’Neill and Cathal Friel will be leading a series of exclusive fireside chats where they will discuss and debate their views on what may be in store for us individually and what businesses can expect from this winter’s COVID-19 and flu season. Cathal in particular will be articulating quite strongly that Covid-19 is over and going forward it needs to be treated like any other outbreak of the common cold or flu, whereby people simply stay at home if they feel sick, that there’s no further need for testing and that there should be absolutely no further lockdowns or restrictions from COVID-19. He will articulate that it’s very likely that we will see a fairly substantial rise in COVID-19 infections again in November/December, because those are the months every year when Coronaviruses i.e. COVID-19, circulate most widely. Likewise, August/September are the months where the common cold viruses peak and furthermore November/December are the months when influenza peaks. As such, going forward COVID-19 will peak each winter and everybody, including governments and businesses, need to now deal with it as they do with the common cold and flu outbreaks.
Professor Luke O’Neill is a world-renowned immunologist and one of the most well-known and trusted voices of Ireland’s COVID-19 pandemic.
Cathal Friel is a co-founder and Chairman of Poolbeg Pharma plc. He is also the co-founder of world- renowned infectious disease clinical trials company, Open Orphan plc and he has had first-hand experience in dealing with Covid-19 over the last two years after running the world’s first Covid-19 human challenge clinical trial. In human challenge studies a small number of healthy volunteers in a controlled setting are exposed to an infectious agent, in this instance, COVID-19, and scientists and medics assess how effective vaccines or treatments are against the disease and identify any side effects.
Poolbeg Pharma plc CEO Jeremy Skillington and CFO Ian O’Connell will outline the exciting work that Poolbeg has been doing in developing a portfolio of drugs to help protect us all against future pandemics and infectious diseases.
Registration is open to the public and is free to attend on a first come, first served basis with links to book on Poolbeg Pharma’s website www.poolbegpharma.com.
