Covid-19 contact tracing to be widened
Significant global issues have impacted the speed of testing for Coronavirus in Ireland, a member of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) has said.
Dr Cillian De Gascun made the comments as it was confirmed that another 14 people have died from the illness in Ireland, taking the overall death toll to 85.
The team also confirmed a further 212 cases in Ireland, bringing to 3,447 the overall number of cases.
Of those, 834 have required hospitalisation, with 126 being admitted to ICUs across the country.
Ireland is trying to ramp up its lab testing and is also attempting to secure more reagents, a lab liquid used during virus testing, but Dr De Gascun said this was a global problem.
“There has been serious global issues in the context of supplying reagents. We’ve had a huge groundswell of support from our partnerships and universities.
“Unfortunately there’s a certain amount of proprietary material we need, so we’re currently testing in the region of 1,500 tests a day.
“We would like to be somewhere in the region of 5,000, so we are some way behind on that, but that doesn’t really change our strategy which is to build capacity to do 10,000 or 15,000 tests a day by the end of this month.”
Dr De Gascun said that both the new methods and new equipment may come on stream in the next seven to 10 days, which may improve Ireland’s capacity to test.
Deputy chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said that while he understood the public focus on testing, it was important to note that testing is a measure taken for the community, not just the patient.
“The test is done for the benefit of the population as a whole. It allows us identify those who are positive first and foremost for the purposes of contact tracing.
“The existence of a positive test does not change the clinical management of an individual. But it does indicate to us who we should contact trace.”
To deal with ongoing issues with testing, contact tracing for people confirmed to have contracted Covid-19 will begin with their contacts in the 48 hours before becoming symptomatic.
The move was suggested by the NPHET in a bid to further stop the spread of the illness in Ireland and confirmed last night by Dr Glynn. He said that the move to introduce further contact tracing would serve to reduce transmission but that it was “a recognition that we are not testing as many people as we would like to be at this point”.
He said: “I can confirm that expanded contact tracing for all confirmed cases for the 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms, as decided by National Public Health Emergency Team will commence this week.
"This will reduce transmission of the virus.
“The HSE has been ramping up its contact tracing capacity so we’re using that capacity to overcome the limitation of contact tracing.”
Dr Glynn said that the new measure was in line with new guidelines from the European Centre for Disease Control, which has suggested the expansion of contact tracing to the two days before a patient shows symptoms because of evidence which shows Covid-19 can be transmitted before a patient begins to feel unwell.
The latest restrictions in operation since Friday, March 27 mandate that everyone should stay at home, only leaving to:
- Shop for essential food and household goods;
- Attend medical appointments, collect medicine or other health products;
- Care for children, older people or other vulnerable people - this excludes social family visits;
- Exercise outdoors - within 2kms of your home and only with members of your own household, keeping 2 metres distance between you and other people
- Travel to work if you provide an essential service - be sure to practice social distancing
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