One-quarter of Covid-19 test appointments not being kept

25% of Covid-19 test appointments are not being kept, according to HSE chief operations officer Anne O'Connor. File Picture: Photocall Ireland/PA Wire

One-in-four appointments for Covid-19 tests are not being kept, the HSE has said.

The executive’s chief operating officer Anne O’Connor said the evidence at present is that 25% of appointments are not being attended, with the trend varying from location to location.

The news was delivered at the HSE’s latest Covid-19 operational briefing in Dublin.

HSE chief executive Paul Reid told the briefing that the average daily cases in Ireland is now 120, up from 114 last week, while the number of cases in hospitals are also trending upwards.

Admissions to intensive care remain stable thus far however, he said.

Some 62,000 tests were carried out last week at an average of 12,000 per day, Mr Reid said.

He said a worry remains that people attending for testing are, in a “significant proportion” of cases, giving incorrect contact details to testers, such as delivering a landline number rather than a mobile number thus making the delivery of a result text impossible.

More than 850,000 tests have now been carried out across Ireland since the crisis began, the briefing heard, while 150,000 serial tests - those aimed at a specific sector or cohort - have now also been carried out.

Mr Reid said that 45,000 such tests have thus far been carried out in nursing homes, previously the site of the worst mortality rates seen at the beginning of the pandemic, with a positivity rate of one in every thousand.

Meanwhile, serial testing of the country’s 7,000 residents in direct provision is to commence later this week, he said, at a rate of 4,000 tests per week over a fortnight.

In terms of the return to schools, Mr Reid said anyone removed from class with suspected Covid-19 has been tested on the same day, with a result available the following day. The average turnaround time in such cases is 34 hours he said, compared with 2.2 days for testing overall.

Ms O’Connor said that, ahead of the winter season, trolley numbers are “significantly lower” than those seen at this time last year.

The winter season of late 2019 had seen a situation where record numbers on trolleys were recorded after the seasonal flu hit roughly six weeks early.

Ms O’Connor said that emergency departments across the country now operated segregated areas for trollies due to Covid, meaning the situation is dealt with very differently from how it was a year ago.

She cited the example of University Hospital Limerick which, at present, is seeing numbers roughly 14% of what was the case 12 months ago. She added that 84 new beds will have been added to UHL by the end of the year.

Dr Colm Henry, the HSE’s chief clinical officer, said that the median age of Covid-19 cases in Ireland is now just 31, despite the fact the number of positives in over-75s is on the increase.