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The HSE has defended its decision to suspend serial testing on meat plants to meet the increase in referrals from GPs for Covid-19 testing for people showing symptoms in the community.
Paul Reid, HSE CEO, said it was the “right decision” to reallocate resources from serial asymptomatic testing in food processing plants because if the trend of community testing referrals continued, the system would be almost up to it. weekly capacity of 100,000 tests.
Speaking at HSE’s weekly Covid-19 briefing, he said the number of GP referrals for testing this week, a large proportion of which were for children returning to school and people in North Dublin, it created a “significant challenge in daily lab testing because we are reaching capacity.”
Mr. Reid said the HSE had to “sort” the tests and prioritize the referral of people showing symptoms of Covid-19 and that they need to make “the right daily agile decisions.”
“We have the capacity of 100,000. We have to address what comes to us on a daily basis and we have to follow the public health guidance and prioritization of resources, ”said Mr. Reid.
When asked if it was necessary to increase the weekly capacity of 100,000 tests, which is equivalent to approximately 14,200 per day, he said: “If it is necessary to increase the capacity, we will have to look for that.”
The HSE received 13,000 referrals for testing on Monday and another 8,000 on Tuesday, forcing the health service to postpone scheduled serial testing in asymptomatic cases at meat plants and food processing companies, a high-risk area that led to to local closings last month. next week.
“Both of them [days ]they are significant increases in the referral from a typical day for testing in the community, which has generally been 4,000 to 5,000, “Reid told reporters at the UCD briefing in Dublin.
The 21,000 referrals for community testing in a two-day period are compared to 28,000 referrals for community testing throughout the past week and 25,000 the week before. This represented a 16.5 percent increase in community testing needs for the week, he said.
Reid said that some days, the demand for lab tests had surpassed 14,000, which is close to the state’s daily capacity for Covid-19 testing.
Niamh O’Beirne, HSE leader in testing and contact tracing, said there are more than 12,000 appointments scheduled today for symptomatic people seeking evidence for Covid-19.
“That makes our decision the right thing to do to make sure we have the capacity to do those tests in our community because, in addition to those 12,000, we will have at least 3,000 in the acute state. [hospital] system, so it’s already reaching 15,000, ”said Ms. O’Beirne.
To address the increased number of referrals for testing in the community, the HSE has opened three additional “emerging” swab centers: in Limerick, Tallaght, and Carlow-Kilkenny.
It is adding more personnel to increase vehicle lanes at the test centers at Swords and at Citywest in Dublin and was deploying more Defense Forces personnel at the test center at Aviva Stadium.
Nearly 57,000 swabs have been taken in serial nursing home tests showing a 0.2% positivity rate and 12,800 meat plant swabs showing a 0.27% positivity rate.
The overall test positivity rate has risen to more than 1 percent over the past six weeks.
Reid said the median end-to-end response time from referral for a test to contacts of an infected person being traced was 2.1 days, and the median test response was 27 hours.
Limerick and Dublin
HSE Clinical Director Dr Colm Henry said the 14-day infection incidence rate was 38 per 100,000 people in the country, but higher in Dublin at 71 and Limerick at 60.
The National Public Health Emergency Team, when it meets today, will be “mindful” in considering options for public health measures in response to the higher infection rates in the two counties in light of the impact the lockdowns have on children and the elderly, he said.
“Nobody wants to go back to a large-scale confinement,” he said, although he noted concern about the local resurgence of the disease in groups that are more vulnerable to ending up in hospital.
“NPHET will consider how we can reinforce the extinction of the virus within homes by reducing the opportunity for the virus to spread to jump from one home to another,” he said at the briefing.
Dr. Henry said there has been a “small but steady increase” in the number of people over the age of 75, the age group most at risk from Covid-19, who have been contracting the virus recently.
The HSE said the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus disease among the 888 cases reported between August 25 and September 7 was 59, or 3.1 percent.
Of the 59 people hospitalized for the disease in the two weeks through Sept. 7, 31 were 65 or older, 16 were under 35, and 12 were between 35 and 65.
Reid said the average daily number of new Covid-19 cases in the past seven days has been 151, up from 120 in a week.
The number of confirmed cases in hospitals has been on an upward trend, standing at 50 now, up from 40 last week.
The number of cases in intensive care units remains stable at six.
Mr. Reid said that the HSE has seen a “worrying trend” of people presenting to health services with anxiety and mental problems during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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