Sir, – Graham Gudgin (Letters, April 23rd) concludes that the death rates North and South of the Border are "much the same" . Historians may yet prove this is the case but at the moment the raw figures in The Irish Times every day provide disturbing disparities between the two territories. At the moment, we see that the North has far fewer cases per head of population than the South but with a higher death rate for those infected.
Now either there is a specifically “Northern” version of Covid-19 which affects less people but with greater lethality or the more likely scenario is that there are a lot of cases in the North that are going unreported or undetected.
Either way, given the porous nature of the Border, the North-South discrepancies are deeply worrying for when we finally try to emerge from our lockdown. – Yours, etc,
JOHN COTTER,
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Ferrybank,
Waterford.