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:
On the process for food processing plants and meat plants in general, what happens is the testing process is determined and the public health team guides whether it is mass testing. It is kind of similar to what I just relayed around the criteria for schools. It would assess it based on the transmission of the virus, the seriousness of the cases emerging from the virus, how local management has adapted to the requests for implementation of certain measures, the capacity of the plant to implement the measures and the capacity of the workforce in complying with the implementation of the measures. Our public health teams then assess all of that and the nature of the transmission from and into the community. They address all those factors and determine the testing approach and whether that is mass testing. We would then assess both in terms of serial testing in conjunction with NPHET. We have done a combination of both. We have done mass testing in plants where outbreaks emerged-----
No comments