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Ireland faces a “rollercoaster” up and down in Covid-19 restriction levels for the foreseeable future, a UCC scientist warned.
UCC biochemistry professor Tom Cotter says Ireland’s Covid-19 positivity rate has risen steadily from 1.2% in early September to 3.9% this week.
“When you reach 4% positivity in the test rate at that stage, you lose control of the virus,” warned Professor Cotter.
“We saw it in Israel, which has been more or less closed. In the Czech Republic it is around 5-6%. You just can’t track and trace the virus when it hits that level of positivity and that’s a problem; you’ve lost control, “he added.
The current Covid-19 testing and tracking system “is not fast enough” and newer testing and technologies should be considered, Professor Cotter said.
It takes an average of 36 to 48 hours to deliver test results and up to five days to complete the testing and contact tracing process, which is too slow to track the virus, he said.
Rapid antigen tests have the potential to provide results in 20-30 minutes, and some showed good sensitivity and precision.
“If a person becomes infected and transmits it to three people and that cycle continues 10 times, they will have 60,000 people infected from a single case. That’s the magnitude of the problem, but if you can run the test quickly, you can stop that, ”said Professor Cotter.
“We are committed to the only test system, which is based on PCR (polymerization chain reaction), and for some reason, it does not appear that we are looking for other options that are used in other countries,” he added.
“In Italy they are using rapid antigen tests in schools and airports, but we are not doing any of that in Ireland,” said Professor Cotter.
“I can’t understand why we are not adopting other technologies to search for the virus,” he said, adding that an evaluation of new and alternative tests and technologies was not happening fast enough.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) confirmed to that the evaluation of new test technologies was discussed in the Expert Advisory Group on Tuesday and that a report will be sent to Nphet this week before publication.
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