Six day postponement for Tyrone ‘of little benefit’

A LOCAL GP believes the six day postponement of Tyrone’s All-Ireland Senior Football Championship semi-final clash with Kerry will have little to no benefit to the players effected by Covid-19.

The eagerly anticipated encounter has been put off for six days until August 21 because of the number of Covid cases within the Tyrone camp and Dr Brendan O’Hare believes performance levels will still suffer.

“They will certainly not be back to anything like 100 per-cent fitness [after six days].

“There is no way,” the Castlederg GP confirmed.

“Those who are immunised have a chance. Six days after an infection, a bad flu or anything else, there’s no way you are going to be back and it’s not going to happen with Covid.”

Tyrone joint-manager, Brian Dooher, admits that they may have no choice but to withdraw from the championship.

He says they’ll “make a call on it probably in the middle of next week” – and it’s understood they’re hoping GAA chiefs will reconsider and grant their initial request of a two-week deferment.

The Gaelic Players Association also issued a statement yesterday (Wednesday) emphasising the health and well-being of the Tyrone players.

Meanwhile, Dr O’Hare hopes that the rising Covid rates in the county will serve as a wake-up call to the rest of the population locally to get vaccinated if they haven’t already done so.

“It needs to be a wake-up call,” added added the GP, who runs the Western Rural Care Practice.

He continued, “The immunisation is not 100 per cent.

“I myself, two weeks ago, despite being double immunised, got Covid and I’m not an elite athlete.

“The acute stage was over in three days, my temperature had settled and I was slightly tired, but the difference between a trivial flu like illness and an admission to hospital is what the vaccine did for someone like me.

“But for those guys, who are nowhere near my level of risk, occasionally people in that age group become sick and it will have an impact upon them for a lot longer than six days.

“It need to be a wake-up call, it really does. You can get sick with it, even at a younger age.

“They need to think about this and think about it seriously because this is not a game.

“I have a friend, who is a GP, a female GP in her mid-30s, who caught Covid a year ago.

“This girl did 10k runs and while she is back at work, she now goes to bed when she gets home. The 10k runs are out the door.

“It’s no respector of age whatsoever, so this is a wake-up call to us all.

“The vaccine has stalled in the younger age groups but we do need to push on,” he concluded.