Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 June 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Congregated Settings: Nursing Homes (Resumed)

Mr. Jim Breslin:

A whole range of lessons have been learned. The types of measures we have taken on testing and case definition have all been informed by international learning. I do not fully accept that we have a very high fatality rate. I believe Dr. David Nabarro was correct in stating that we have been much more comprehensive in our recording of deaths. In addition, regarding the proportion of deaths that have taken place in nursing homes, while I will not say we have been fully successful, we have put in place many measures to suppress community transmission that avoided deaths in the community. This leads to a higher proportion of deaths being in nursing homes. If we had twice the number of community deaths, the percentage of deaths in nursing homes would be 40%, not 60%.

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