Professor Martin Cormican:

Sequencing is resource intensive. The capacity of Ireland to do sequencing has increased greatly over recent months but it does require resources. At the moment, where there is an outbreak in a healthcare or hospital setting, we recommend that the sample from the first case be sent for sequencing if it is suitable for sequencing. There are technical requirements to be considered. Sometimes samples cannot be sequenced for technical purposes and then additional samples are used as required. A judgment is made as to whether the sequencing is likely to be informative. As Mr. Parkinson said, all the circumstances are taken into account, after which a question arises as to whether sequencing would be useful. No country would have the capacity to sequence all the viruses at the moment, to my knowledge. Our capacity is probably similar to that of other countries but it is used selectively where it is likely to be informative. The comment made in our statement was more by way of explaining that in certain circumstances one can be very confident the virus was acquired at the workplace. For example, if a group of patients in a ward or nursing home are all infected with virus with a specific genetic sequence and the exact same fingerprint is found in the workers on the ward, it puts it beyond all reasonable doubt that the infection is workplace related. That, however, would not be done universally in any setting. It is helpful in some cases and in others it is not. Sometimes there appears to be a relationship with the workplace but when one looks at the genetic fingerprint, one finds out it is not connected to the workplace because the fingerprint is distinct. Sequencing is not done routinely but selectively. It is useful but not useful in isolation. It is not used in isolation but it is used, as Mr. Parkinson said, in the context of all the other circumstances.