Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 September 2020
1056. Deputy Michael Healy-Rae asked the Minister for Health if diagnostic, radiology and laboratory departments are allowed timely access to allow investigations for both hospital doctors and general practitioners in the community; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21304/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraAs the Deputy will be aware, there is now capacity in place to test 15,000 people a day (100,000 tests a week) across our hospital and community system. While this level of capacity isn’t being used on a continuous basis, the testing and contact tracing operational and resource model has been designed to flex up and down as required to meet demand on an ongoing basis.
In the week ending 31st August almost 62,000 laboratory tests were undertaken, one of the highest weekly amounts since the pandemic began. The recent weekly positivity rate has been running at approx. 1.5%.
Hospitals are generally responsible for undertaking COVID-19 testing of their own patients and staff, while GPs have direct access to the HSE community testing programme through the SwiftQ IT referral system. The HSE has invested significant resources in our COVID-19 laboratory system. There is a network of laboratories in place across the hospital system and a number of community based laboratories focused on COVID-19 testing, including two commercial providers.
The HSE has placed significant effort on reducing turnaround times as much as possible. The median time for referral to appointment in the community is 0.8 days, with 90.5% receiving an appointment the same or next day. The median time for swab taken to laboratory result in the community is 30 hours, while in the hospital system it is 17 hours (including transit times).
The HSE provide daily updated information on its testing and contact tracing dashboard available at the following link.
https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/newsfeatures/covid19-updates/integrated-information-service-testing-and-contact-tracing-dashboard.html
