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Ireland will be dealing with Covid-19 for a long time even if a vaccine is developed, says the country’s health chief
Ireland will be dealing with Covid-19 for a long time even if a vaccine is developed, the country’s health chief said.
Paul Reid warned that the country should plan for the next waves of the pandemic.
“Even with a vaccine, the reality is that we will be dealing with Covid-19 for a long time to come,” he said.
“We must all adapt our way of life through a combination of health care, social and behavioral changes.”
The Health Service Executive (HSE) chief executive made the remarks when he appeared before the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 Response on Tuesday.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that we can wait and therefore we must plan for the next waves of Covid-19,” he said.
“A ‘community first’ approach to care delivery will be critical to providing safe, efficient and effective services during the winter and beyond.”
He added that it would be important to support people to receive care at or near home, particularly the elderly and people with chronic diseases, and to improve patient flow and the patient experience in our acute care hospitals.
Mr. Reid also told the committee that all flu vaccine shipments are expected to be delivered before the end of October.
“We got enough doses to vaccinate all risk groups,” he said.
“This winter, the vaccine will be offered to children ages 2 to 12, will be delivered in the form of a nasal spray, and will be available from GPs and pharmacists starting this week.”
The HSE chief reiterated his call for people to adhere to public health guidelines.
It comes as the gardai set up checkpoints along the border to deter people from breaking the level three restrictions in place in Donegal.
He added: “A difficult winter season, coupled with a Covid-19 resurgence, is the worst possible scenario for our healthcare services.
“While this is an eventuality that we hope to avoid, it is also a scenario for which we have been carefully planning.”
He also told politicians that the HSE test and trace model was meeting demand despite the recent surge in cases, and that Ireland was one of the few countries that automatically tests close contacts and does serial testing.
“It’s important to emphasize that we are meeting all the demand for testing,” Reid said.
To date, more than 1.12 million tests have been completed. Last week 87,940 tests and 15,381 contact tracing calls were made, the highest number of HSEs to date.
The average end-to-end response time in community settings over the past seven days is two days and 90% of people tested in the community received their result within this time period.
Reid said that in an attempt to speed up test notification periods, the HSE was seeking additional equipment, robots and process methodologies to increase its in-house testing capacity and response.
Sinn Fein’s David Cullinane said the HSE needed to improve when it comes to test response times and needed to have much stronger targets.
Mr. Reid said the HSE was in the process of recruiting 700 people to sample and 500 people to do contact tracing.
He said that if the virus continues as planned, they would need more capacity, that they would continue to recruit, and the capacity in the labs would also increase.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill of Fine Gael also called on the HSE to improve response times. She said the test and trace model had not been fast enough with respect to schools.
Reid said that some 4,328 children and teachers had been screened in recent weeks and that there had been 11 outbreaks across the country involving schools since they opened in September.
In all, he said 180 children and parents had been named as index cases and another 84 cases had been traced from them.
“We are putting a great focus on that,” he added. “Positively, it’s keeping our kids in schools and keeping our schools open, which is exactly what we want to do.”
When asked by Social Democrats TD Roisin Shortall about the total cost of running the test and trace system, Mr. Reid told the commission that he expected the cost to reach 450 million euros by the end of this year. Next year he expects the cost of the service to rise to 700 million euros.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly will appear before the Covid-19 committee on Wednesday.
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