Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 19 May 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Briefing by Department of Health Officials

Dr. Tony Holohan:

We are at that capacity now. We think that is the scale that we need for the various different categories, and I can explain what it is composed of. That number was arrived at as a result of the work that we did at the National Public Health Emergency Team, which is attended not only by people from the Department and a range of other organisations, but also by the senior leadership of the HSE. They are all party to our discussions. Our collective assessment was that was what we believed that we needed. That was the target that we set out to achieve, and it has now been achieved. However, it is not the only target that is important. The key target from our point of view is the turnaround, namely the length of time it takes to get a piece of information back to a patient, or in respect of a patient to a public health team to allow the necessary processes of contact tracing, or indeed clinical management if it is a patient who is unwell and where clinical management is needed for them. That is the critical thing.

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