Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 22 September 2020
689. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Health when his attention was drawn to the HSE decision to suspend Covid-19 testing at food processing plants made on 8 September 2020; the manner in which the decision was conveyed to him; the reason he did not convey this information to Dáil Éireann; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24703/20]
View answerCOVID-19 testing of staff at meat and food processing facilities was not suspended during the week ended 11 September. In fact, the three days (September 9th, 10th and 11th) were re-scheduled into the following week. This was a precautionary measure by the HSE, which I was briefed on by the HSE on Tuesday 8th, to ensure resources were focused on meeting the significant rise in demand for testing among people with coronavirus symptoms in the community. For example, testing demand had nearly trebled on Monday 7th September compared to the previous week with a requirement for over 13,000 community tests and over 3,000 hospital tests.
Meat Plant testing has been taking place all last week (started Monday 14th). As of September 15th, there had been a total of 15,388 swabs taken and 50 detected cases (0.45% positivity rate).
To deal with this very significant increase in demand for testing in the community, the HSE has needed to flex up resources significantly, with re-opening of community testing centres, and pop-up testing centres, such as in for example Kildare. Other examples demonstrating the commitment to increased resources include:
- In we 14th September, over 82,000 swabs were taken including over 60k in community.
- Over 80,000 lab tests were completed in week ending 20th September, one of the highest weekly amounts to date.
- There has now been over 1,000,000 Covid19 tests since testing in Ireland began.
- Also, the number of contact tracers increased to 280 by 17th September.
- Two HSE campaigns for the recruitment of full-time staff for Community swabbing and contact tracing are currently live.
