Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 9 June 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Reopening the Economy: Public Health Advice

Dr. Cillian De Gascun:

I kind of never want to hear the 15,000 a day thing for a long time, to be honest. Obviously, we need capacity. The 15,000 was based on looking at an influenza-like illness, ILI, rate from previous seasons and from viruses to see what the actual demand might be. The NVRL was receiving 7,000, 8,000 or 9,000 samples per day in late March or early April and we did not have the capacity on the island to do that testing. That is where the plan for 15,000 came from. Ultimately, we wanted to have the capacity to implement the public health strategy that was there at the time so that everybody who needed a test could have a test. Again it comes back to what we were discussing earlier about not being able to predict exactly what that number would be. We wanted to be able to test everybody who needed a test, and certainly there was a period in late March and the first half of April where we were not able to do that. Now that we have significant spare capacity, we are in that position and we want to stay in that position.

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