“The message from the Health Minister Robin Swann is clear. We cannot afford to be complacent about social distancing otherwise we risk seeing the number of deaths rising. That should be our focus. It`s utterly shameful that Mary Lou McDonald should seek to use this public health emergency to attempt to create selfish political opportunity in a crisis to advance Sinn Fein political ideology following hard on the heels of Declan Kearney`s ill-judged comments.
“Every single death is a tragedy. Comparisons by some pundits and politicians presented as if it`s a competition in death are utterly grotesque. It isn`t helpful, especially as data is not always comparable and not all measure from the same point. This is the first wave of a potentially multi-wave pandemic that we are only seeing the beginning stages of.
“Using the tragic death of many hundreds of people, especially the most vulnerable in our society, as an opportunity to score political points is perverse. The peer reviewed epidemiological history of this will be written in years to come, not by pundits and politicians taking skewed snapshots to score political points.”