Leading physician says testing and contract tracking must ‘speed up’



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The Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) said testing and follow-up of contacts should be accelerated as part of efforts to address Covid-19.

ICGP President Mary Favier said patients still take a long time to get results.

“When a patient calls a general practitioner like me, and I can make a referral, that would generally be done in an hour or so.

“A patient will get an appointment for a test often the next day the next day.

“Then they will wait an average of 5 to 7 days to get the results, so you need to accelerate, and then the follow-up to the contract is generally carried out 2-3 days later and that needs to be accelerated.”

Leading physician welcomes falling ICU Covid-19 numbers

There has been a further drop in the number of people receiving Covid-19 treatment in intensive care units.

The latest figure is 98, just the second time it’s been less than 100 in the past month.

The death toll in the Republic is now 1,286 and there are more than 21,000 confirmed cases.

Dr Mary Favier, President of the Irish College of Physicians, said the drop in the number of ICUs is welcome.

Dr. Favier said: “If people spend time in intensive care, whether they have had a serious operation or something has happened to them, it is often only a couple of days, this (coronavirus) can be a couple of weeks. “

“Therefore, we would expect there to be a considerable delay from the time people contract the disease, until they enter the hospital, enter intensive care and are discharged.”

“So it’s very good that we start to see that line start to go down, because it means that infections from, say, a month or six weeks ago were decreasing.”

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