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The Health Service Executive has promised that within eight weeks it will have 800 contact trackers hired to deal with Covid-19.
However, in a statement to RTÉ News, the HSE said that “this process must occur incrementally to ensure that supervision and support are provided to newly trained recruits until they are fully operational.”
There are currently 550 employees working in HSE’s national contact tracing centers.
The HSE said the current hiring process will generate 1,000 employees in total.
Around the start of the pandemic, in March and April, the HSE had around 2,000 contact tracing trained people, with a core of 600 doing the work, in around nine contact tracing centers.
A large number of health personnel were reassigned from their original health posts to assist in this work.
In June and July, the service was reduced to a contact tracing center in Galway, due to the reduction in the number of cases that were reported at the time.
Since the resurgence of cases in August and September, the HSE has increased contact tracing staff.
As of the end of last week, the current number of contact tracing personnel was 550, and the HSE has also relied on 60 Army cadets to support contact tracing for a week.
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Last week, HSE CEO Paul Reid said: “40% of resources to be contracted must come from allied healthcare professionals.
“It is not a contact call center. It is a clinical call that is the first call, and during the last weeks the nature of the cases is more and more complex and the calls take much longer.”
He apologized to people who were told to alert their own close contacts after they tested positive for Covid-19 over the weekend of October 17, following a spike in cases.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said it was a unique situation where demand outstripped supply and a single operational decision was made to reestablish the system.
Borders as the first line of defense
The President of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh has said that when we reflect on the response to Covid-19, one of the biggest mistakes will be the lack of border controls and the use of borders as the first line of defense against this virus.
Professor Devi Sridhar told RTÉ’s News at One that those countries that established travel restrictions from the beginning have prevented the spread of the virus and those that have maintained them have prevented the re-seeding of that virus.
He said that a decision must be made at the European level, if you live with restrictions in your daily life or close your borders, as has been done in Asia and the Pacific, but you recover your daily life.
Professor Sridhar said that countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, Australia and New Zealand have joint travel bubbles.
He said these countries solved their public health problem, “kickstarted their national economies and then began to support the aviation industry through travel bubbles.”
Professor Sridhar said that if this were to be implemented in Ireland and the UK, then there should be a two-island strategy due to land borders, to make decisions on how to lower levels, while testing is being done at airports.
Hospital numbers on the rise
Figures from HSE show that there are 354 people in hospitals with confirmed Covid-19. Of these 38 are in intensive care.
The hospitals with the highest number of patients are: Cork University Hospital 30; Cavan 27 General Hospital; Tallaght 26 University Hospital; Beaumont 25 and Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown with 24.
Yesterday, the medical director urged people to comply with public health advice on self-isolation and restraint movements.
Dr. Tony Holohan said there are “too many stories” of people having Covid-19 symptoms or waiting for test results not isolating themselves, and people who are contacts but not restricting their movements.
He added that self-isolation means staying indoors completely and avoiding contact with other people, including the people you live with.
His comments came after the Health Department announced that it was notified of an additional 939 new cases of Covid-19 tonight, while three more deaths were also recorded.
It brings the total number of virus-related deaths to 1,885 and the total number of cases to 58,067.
The 14-day incidence rate of the virus nationwide is now 309.9.
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