Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 14 October 2020
87. Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire asked the Minister for Education the reason teachers who received a notification from the Covid-19 tracker app indicating they must isolate because they were a close contact of a confirmed case were then told by the Department of Health that they did not need to isolate; and the reason the notifications do not apply to the teaching profession. [30279/20]
View answerThe Health Protection Surveillance Centre and the HSE have published guidance for managing potential cases of COVID-19 in educational settings, which includes the testing strategy within an educational facility ‘Schools Pathway for COVID-19, the Public Health approach’:
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/a0bff-reopening-our-primary-and-special-schools/
This guidance provides that the HSE Department of Public Health will liaise directly with schools regarding any actions to be taken following a Public Health Risk Assessment. Close contacts within the school setting are identified by Departments of Public Health following a Public Health Risk Assessment (PHRA).
If there is any information provided from the HSE COVID Tracker App, this information will be considered in the risk assessment. However, it may be that not all people who are alerted through the APP are actually deemed close contacts, or vice versa – Public Health might determine that some people who have not been notified by the APP are close contacts. While the COVID tracker APP is a very useful tool for collecting information on potential close contacts, Public Health Risk Assessment (PHRA) collects more nuanced, composite information to better appraise infection transmission risk in defined circumstances.
