Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 29 September 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Covid-19: Update on Testing and Tracing and Rising Incidence in the State

Photo of Matt ShanahanMatt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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This is not a personal criticism of Dr. Henry but I believe the perfect is the enemy of the good here. With regard to the point on specificity, antigen test specificity is 90%. I am not sure the rate for PCR is much higher, to be honest. I am not an expert in this area but I certainly know there are other options besides those being pursued by NPHET. I and others in the medical space cannot understand why we are not pursuing these methods when other countries, such as Germany, and cities such as Vienna are pursuing them. Vienna is pursuing a new test, called a gurgle test, which has a turnaround time of six hours. There is a fleet of buses going around doing LAMP testing in schools.

How can we not move to some level of rapid turnaround testing?