Dr. Siobhán Kennelly:

There is a very close relationship between all the public health teams on the ground and their colleagues in nursing homes and across many of the workplaces the Deputy outlined. Those public health colleagues will link directly with the care provider in the nursing home. They will establish where the positive cases are and what is the safest way of cohorting, which means grouping together residents who are positive into one area, and having as many staff work with them as closely as possible so there is less mixing of staff with residents who are not positive. There is usually very significant testing of all the residents in an affected area along with all the staff in those areas. Much of it depends on the size of the nursing home and the size of the outbreak, but it is very closely monitored with public health colleagues. They in turn link with us clinically, such as with my colleagues, geriatricians and others, to get palliative care advice. A number of reflex clinical actions arise.

Then there is the operational part Ms O'Neill spoke about in terms of the types of supports that are needed, be it for PPE, infection prevention and control, surveillance and assistance with that. They are well outlined and are available to all the care settings when it happens.