Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 26 August 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

State Response to Recent Spike in Covid-19 Cases

Mr. Paul Reid:

It is a good question. I will try to be brief. I have always described what we put in place at the start as a rapid-fire wartime model. We have modified it significantly over the past weeks and months in terms of automation of the process. An example is the automation of the negative test results that we put in place and that carries on. Second, there is an automation between our labs and our contact tracing teams with both systems interfacing. That took 24 hours off the process of handovers to different systems.

Ms O'Beirne is working with us on what I described in the opening statement as a future model. We are now looking at a more standardized and permanently recruited workforce, both for our contact tracing and our swabbing. Part of that will be looking at the logistics and the transportation of the swabs from various parts of the country to a lab in order that we can turn them around more quickly. We are looking at elements of automation, logistics, transportation and a permanent workforce.

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