Covid-19 Ireland: Close contacts of confirmed cases will no longer be screened after increase in number

Close contacts of confirmed Covid-19 cases will no longer be advised to seek evidence due to an increase in positive tests over the past few days.

Dr. Tony Holohan, CMO, confirmed tonight that close contacts of positive cases are no longer advised to undergo testing.

Instead, close contacts are asked to limit their movements for 14 days and to contact their GP if they develop symptoms of the virus.

The Health Department has issued more information to those who have been in contact with a positive case.

“This temporary measure is being implemented in consultation with GPs, to ensure that those with symptoms are examined as quickly as possible and that we can continue to try to reduce the spread of the virus.

“This step is also to support our contact tracing teams who continue to work under significant pressure due to the increasing rate of positivity at this point in the pandemic.

“During this unprecedented increase in cases, we ask the public to support this action and follow all public health advice and guidelines.

“There has been an extensive service development program for our testing and contact tracing program, including recruiting staff and rolling out new technology to conduct up to 25,000 tests per day and make 7,500 successful calls to contact positive cases of tracking.

“Over the past week, the service has been at a peak escalation and yesterday we processed over 26,000 swabs, over 2,300 calls were made to people with a COVID-19 result detected, and nearly 11,000 calls made to close contacts.

Dr. Tony Holohan, Medical Director, said tonight: “We are once again in the mitigation stage of this pandemic. The alarmingly escalating incidence of the virus in the general population is of great concern.

“This disease is now widespread in our communities and as a result we ask everyone to behave as if they are close contact.

“To support the testing system through this increase, we are no longer advising close contacts of confirmed cases to get tested.

“Test and trace is a containment exercise and we are no longer in a containment phase.

“However, it is imperative that if you are a close contact for a confirmed case, you restrict your movements and contact your GP immediately if you develop symptoms.

“The average number of contacts per case has gone from 2.5 in November to an average in recent days of 6.3”