Pádraig O'Sullivan
Question:1020. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Health when Covid-19 walk-in PCR testing and rapid antigen testing will be rolled out; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16838/21]
View answerWednesday, 31 March 2021
Questions (1020, 1021, 1022)
Pádraig O'Sullivan
Question:1021. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Health the Department that will oversee and undertake the day to day running of Covid-19 walk-in PCR testing and rapid antigen testing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16853/21]
View answerPádraig O'Sullivan
Question:1022. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Health if pharmacies or other authorised health providers will be involved in the delivery of Covid-19 walk-in PCR testing and rapid antigen testing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16869/21]
View answerWritten answers
I propose to take Questions Nos. 1020 to 1022, inclusive, together.
As part of the HSE’s enhanced COVID-19 testing for local communities, from Thursday March 25th, five new ‘walk-in, no appointment necessary’ testing centres have been established to actively look for cases of COVID-19. These centres, which are opening in areas where the number of positive cases is particularly high, will allow people who don’t have symptoms of COVID-19 to get a free test without having to contact their GP first. Around 20% of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic.
The testing centres will be open from Thursday, 25 March to Wednesday, 31 March from 11am to 7pm. Social distancing measures will apply as people turn up for testing.
Testing people with no symptoms will help to find positive cases earlier, will help in breaking chains of transmission and will help us better understand how and why the virus is spreading quicker in certain areas.
The initial locations at Blanchardstown, Grangegorman, Irishtown, Tallaght and Tullamore have been decided based on local disease prevalence and public health director’s advice. The locations will change week-on-week.
Anybody may use this free, walk-in COVID-19 testing provided they are aged 16 years and over; do not have symptoms of COVID-19 but would like to be tested; may not have their own GP (doctor); live within 5k of the walk-in testing centre.
Persons who want to be tested should bring photo ID and provide a mobile phone number so the HSE can contact them with their results. Working with the National Ambulance Service, the HSE aims to carry out 300-500 COVID-19 tests per day at each walk-in centre. Any detected cases will be referred to contact tracing in the same way as detected cases that were referred through by a GP.
The HSE has deployed antigen detection tests (ADTs) for use in specific indications in the acute hospital setting, and as part of the response to outbreaks in the community setting in symptomatic vulnerable populations and their close contacts, supported by appropriate clinical governance and operational arrangements. This includes updating the case definition for SARS-CoV-2 to accept notification of positive results from ADTs undertaken in the public health system and reporting of such cases to the COVID Care tracker and to the Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting (CIDR) information system developed to manage the surveillance and control of infectious diseases in Ireland.
Considerable work has been undertaken to date to evaluate the use of ADTS in an Irish context and this will continue on an ongoing basis due to the role they can have in the national testing strategy. In particular, further setting-specific ADT validation work continues to be undertaken by the HSE. Antigen testing will not, however, replace the requirement for large scale PCR testing which remains the gold standard for community testing.
I have also set up a group, chaired by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Mark Ferguson, to examine the use of rapid tests in the community, and I will be considering the recommendations of this group.
On an ongoing basis, NPHET considers and reviews, based on public health risk assessments, how best to target testing to detect, and mitigate the impact of, the virus across the population. This includes keeping Ireland’s national testing policy under continuing review.