Dr. Colm Henry:

I thank the Deputy. The number of testing centres in operation at one stage was at 48 and we built up a capability for 100,000 tests per week but with falling community transmission the demand for testing has fallen week on week to 18,000 tests in the past week. We have capacity for 100,000 tests per week.

We set up a contact tracing exercise to support our public health departments in ten departments around the country. These consist mostly of both medical and non-medical staff who do the more routine contract tracing exercises. Again, demand for this has fallen considerably with reduced community transmission and reduced numbers of contacts per case from a peak of 20 in mid-April to about three or so now. We have centralised the contact management programme to a unit in Galway. I ask my colleague, Ms O'Beirne, to come in on this. We have retained the capability to ramp up considerably at short notice should we see in increase in the R value or an increase in the number of positive tests or contacts.