Mr. Chris O'Grady:

I am a registered pharmacist and a director of Duelchem Limited. I apologise because my Gaeilge is not as polished as Mr. O'Brien's. Duelchem is an Irish pharmaceutical retail and wholesale company based in County Kilkenny, which was set up in 2008. We have been supplying the Irish healthcare sector with pharmaceutical products for more than a decade. We have a strong working relationship with the HSE, collaborating on multiple projects, with a view to expanding this relationship.

As a pharmaceutical wholesaler, we hold a wholesale distribution authorisation licence which is regulated by the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA. This HPRA regulation obligates us to verify the integrity of our suppliers and the products we distribute and to register with the Irish Medicines Verification Organisation, IMVO. Our regulatory affairs team ensures we are prepared for and comply with legislative changes such as the falsified medicines directive, the recent medicinal devices regulation and the forthcoming May 2022 in vitro diagnostic medical devices regulation.

In response to the pandemic, Duelchem set up reassurance.ie, which operates a number of testing centres to help to identify and ultimately reduce the number of Covid-19 cases. We offer both antigen and PCR tests and publish results, if required, on reporting applications such as healthpassportworldwide.com.

Symptoms have been, to date, the main trigger for self-isolation and Covid-19 testing.

The success of the vaccine programme - the rate of vaccination is estimated to be approximately 50% - does, however, increase the chances of people getting Covid-19 asymptomatically. The absence of symptoms increases the likelihood of Covid-19 spreading within the community because the triggers that we know for self-isolation and testing, such as temperature, loss of taste, flu-like symptoms, etc., are not as prevalent.

Currently, when an individual develops symptoms, he or she self-isolates and contacts his or her GP or the HSE to arrange a PCR test, but 51% to 70% of transmission of Covid-19 happens when no symptoms are present, either pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic. The symptoms usually come from the body's immune response and, therefore, by the time people develop symptoms, they are at their peak viral load or possibly even already past it. By the time they receive the PCR test result in 48 hours to 72 hours, assuming they were symptomatic when they got the test done, they are possibly no longer even transmitting the virus and are no longer infectious or contagious. While the PCR captures the definitive result and initiates contact tracing, antigen tests have a significant role to play in stopping the spread of the virus. The solution we propose today is the use of an antigen self-test in triplicate, with the digital platform to underpin the testing programme. Mr. Osman, our technology expert, will now briefly illustrate the integrated solution.