Chief Medical Officer believes Mater's under-reporting of Covid data 'an isolated incident'

The Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan has said he believes the non-reporting of some Covid-19 cases from the Mater Hospital is likely an isolated incident.

The Dublin hospital said it met all its legal requirements after 244 positive cases from as far back as March were only reported yesterday.

All the cases, some of which date back to mid-March, were reported to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre in one go on Thursday.

In a statement the hospital said it had reported all cases of Covid-19 positive results to the relevant authorities on a daily basis.

“At all times the Mater Hospital provided the information that the HSE required and met all legal requirements to report infectious diseases,” the statement added.

“All of this information is correct and up to date. We are working with the HSE to understand why the provided data may not have been accurately captured.

“The Mater Hospital has also carried out comprehensive contact tracing on every single member of staff who tested positive for Covid-19 through our occupational health department in line with best practice.

“In excess of 300 staff at the Mater have tested positive for Covid-19 and a further 1,500 have self-isolated following contact tracing to protect patients, fellow staff and the public – despite the enormous impact this has had on our operations.”

The HSE has begun an investigation into what happened.

Dr Holohan said reporting has been very strong to date.

He said: "The investigation that the Chief Executive of the HSE is going to conduct will establish that. I'll be honest and say that I'd be surprised if we have another incident like that.

"I think that reporting has been very comprehensive across hospitals, community centres and services all the way through this, I think we've got good reliable data to base our decisions on.

"The additional issue that was raised yesterday has no implications in terms of our assessments of the disease."