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The Health Services Executive (HSE) is embarking on an “enhanced surveillance project” to look further back in time during the contact tracing process, the Oireachtas Covid-19 committee was told Tuesday.
Dr. John Cuddihy, director of the Center for Health Protection Surveillance, told Social Democrat co-leader Roisin Shortall that the project will focus on activities over a 14-day period for new cases of community transmission.
Dr. Cuddihy said the project would analyze “the previous 14 days for more recent community transmission cases,” and the collected information would be fed back into the contact tracing process. He said the project could start next week.
Information will be collected through a questionnaire that will focus on where people have been and who they may have interacted with.
HSE CEO Paul Reid told the committee that the annual cost of running the test and trace system could be as high as € 700 million.
Reid told the Oireachtas Covid-19 committee that he expects the system to cost the region 450 million euros this year, but will increase by 2021.
Mr Reid told Ms Shortall that he is “estimating that the full annual figure for next year, 2021, will be 700 million euros.”
Mr Reid is testing Ireland’s response to Covid, with a specific focus on testing and tracing.
Earlier, the HSE chief said that the state may need to increase its laboratory testing capacity if growth in Covid-19 cases continues.
Reid said that HSE is “modeling [testing] During the winter, if we continue to function as the virus is running, we will need more capacity in our laboratories ”.
He told Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane that it was difficult to “put a number” on potential capacity, as it depends on the progress of the disease in the community.
HSE testing leader Niamh O’Beirne said 91 percent of swabs get a result within 48 hours. The median end-to-end response time for a negative sample is around two days, he said, and increases to three days for a positive sample.
For the contact tracing to be completed, the median time extends to 3.5 days, he said.
Mr. Reid said there are two recruitment drives underway to increase the staffing resource for testing and tracing, with 700 people wanted for swabs and 500 contact trackers.
The HSE expects a total workforce of between 2,500 and 3,500 in all parts of the testing system, the committee was told. The HSE hopes to add the first of its new cohort of contact trackers this week.
The committee also heard about the “quite troubling” impacts on mental health and other impacts of the virus on the health service. Dr. Colm Henry, HSE’s clinical director, warned of the risk of developing “diagnostic tunnel vision,” which could lead to serious infectious diseases being missed due to Covid’s focus on testing.
The rise in hospitalizations associated with Covid is having an impact on the healthcare service, Reid told Labor’s Duncan Smith, with wards being frozen and isolated when cases arise. He also said that there is a “growing trend for healthcare workers to become infected with Covid or to have to isolate themselves.”
Mr. Reid said critical care capacity has grown from 225 beds at the start of the pandemic to 280 beds, with another 17 beds approved for funding in the winter plan.
In his opening statement, Mr. Reid warned that “it is becoming increasingly clear that we can expect and therefore must plan for the next waves” of the disease.
Amid hospital admissions that “are definitely increasing,” he said that “a difficult winter season, coupled with a resurgence of Covid-19, is the worst possible scenario for our healthcare services.”
Mr. Reid told the committee that even with a vaccine “the reality is that we will be dealing with Covid-19 for a long time yet,” and that behavioral and social changes are needed to handle the pandemic.
In his opening statement, he also referred to the state Covid testing and tracing program, which has been the subject of continuous comment since the surge in cases emerged in recent weeks.
The HSE is examining ways to reduce test response time, and the state compares well with other European countries, including Germany, France, Norway, and Italy, when measured by the number of tests performed per one million inhabitants, He said.
“In order to speed up test notification periods, we are also looking for additional equipment, robots and process methodologies to increase our in-house test capacity and turnaround time,” Reid told the committee.
In the past week, the HSE completed 87,940 tests, according to Reid’s initial statement, bringing the total to 1.12 million. Last week, some 15,381 contact tracing calls were completed, the highest number to date.
The committee also heard that the state’s testing capacity is 100,000 per week, with a “surge capacity” of 2,000 per day provided by German laboratories.
The first deliveries of flu vaccines began to GPs, nursing homes and pharmacists on September 17, Reid said, adding that all shipments are expected to be delivered before the end of October. He said the HSE has “secured sufficient doses to vaccinate all risk groups.”
The change approved by the Cabinet last month means the vaccine is offered to a broader group of people free of charge, including children ages two to 12.
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