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Taoiseach Micheál Martin only found out when they sent him a text message a story from the Irish Times that the contact tracing system was so overwhelmed over the weekend that people who tested positive were asked to do their own contact tracing.
The Irish Times revealed on Tuesday night that thousands of close contacts of positive Covid-19 cases over a three day period will not be contacted by the HSE because the contact tracing system was overwhelmed by cases over the weekend. past.
The HSE has said it will send a text message today to between 2,000 and 2,500 people, who have already been informed by text of their infection, asking them to tell their close contacts to contact their GPs immediately to find one. Covid-19 test.
Mr. Martin told opposition leaders that “I am not happy, and I am disappointed with the fact that due to the extraordinary demand” the system was overwhelmed.
But the Taoiseach insisted that there was no tracking system that wasn’t under enormous pressure due to the level of testing, saying they had a capacity of 120,000 weekly tests.
Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy said it is “not good enough” for people to be asked to do “DIY contact tracing,” and said she was surprised Martin found out via text message. The Minister of Health should have informed him and kept him updated, Ms Murphy said.
Labor leader Alan Kelly said it was “crazy” and “absolutely ridiculous” that 2,500 people were asked to contact Trace when they could be in the hospital or in intensive care by asking them to trace their own contacts. He said they should have called the army.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said that “we have to come out of this six-week lockdown with a state-of-the-art, gold standard test and trace system” with a universally 24 hour response time for testing and a similar response time system for tracking.
He said the matter was raised endlessly, but the system sank so badly over the weekend that it collapsed.
Anger of the opposition
Martin faced the ire of opposition leaders at the revelation and criticism of the government’s handling of the situation.
The HSE had reconfigured the system and expected to contact 1,500 people a day, he said.
Recruitment was ongoing for the contact trackers with 400 employees and an additional 220 by the end of next week, with an additional 60-70 new staff each week ending with about 1,000 recruits, according to Martin.
He said it “took a great deal of journalistic action” to discover that it takes more than four days to trace close contacts of infected people.
Kelly said the HSE had a lot to do and suggested that the contact tracing and testing process should be separate and taken over by another regulatory authority.
Kelly also questioned the hiring process for contact tracing and said there were thousands of eligible people, including retired civil servants, who could be employed.
But the Taoiseach said “it’s a bit late” to consider another regulatory authority. He said the system was in place and being reconfigured and 1,500 people would be contacted daily.
Ms. Murphy said the problem is “no small matter” and that if each person had five modest contacts, it would be more than 10,000 people who did not know they had tested positive.
Mr. Martin said that “no secrets” were kept on the matter, and that each person was informed about the contact tracing by text message.
Ms McDonald said it was “hard to believe that almost eight months after a pandemic and her government failed to get it right.”
He said it had been raised endlessly with the government and that the system was so overwhelmed at the weekend that it “completely collapsed and collapsed.”
The Sinn Féin leader said there were many caveats, as a public health doctor had warned that the regional tracking system was as close to collapse as at any other time in the pandemic.
The Dublin Central TD said it was “extremely alarming” that the system collapsed on the eve of a shutdown.
Martin said that the control of the virus is due to human behavior and other testing technologies should be considered. He hoped that by the end of this lockdown they would be able to supplement existing technology with additional methods.
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