The move to Level 5 restrictions was a difficult decision for Government, and is very hard for people whose lives and livelihoods are most affected, but it was necessary to interrupt uncontrolled exponential growth of the pandemic. 1/5 
We can, collectively, suppress transmission of the virus again, if we fully enter into the spirit of these measures, and eliminate, for the next six weeks, close contacts other than our household, ‘bubble’, school or college, or essential work. 2/5
Our modelling shows that to make a success of this, we need get viral transmission down to very low levels. A reproduction number of 0.9 or 0.7 won’t be enough, we need to aim for R = 0.5. 3/5
And we need to keep R close to 0.5 for 6 weeks. If we held R at 0.5 for 3 weeks, cases would fall to about 400 per day, but rise again to about 1000 per day four weeks later. If we keep R at 0.5 for six weeks, cases remain below 200 per day until end-December. 4/5
These models are approximations, but so far have tracked the pandemic reasonably accurately; my thanks to @gleesonj and the entire IEMAG team for their work on these models. 5/5
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