Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In the interests of time, I suggest that I respond to the Deputy in writing on the matters he raised. I am reluctant to disagree with Deputy Naughten because he is often right, as I find out in this House, and he highlighted very important issues here before. My information, for what it is worth, is that when it comes to contact tracing of meat plant staff, and I specifically asked this on foot of contact from the Deputy, the amount of contact tracing is much higher than one third and is between at least 60% and 70%, although there are a number of cases in which there are contact and communications difficulties. We have a national outbreak team chaired by a very good doctor, Dr. Mannix. I suggest that I put the Deputy directly in contact with her for a briefing on the work being done in regard to the meat plants, considering the Deputy has highlighted so many important issues.

With regard to the negative test results, I should have said that, in order to speed up the process, since the middle of last month we have been delivering negative results by text message. I am told by the HSE that, in the community and the hospital, these text messages are now delivered within a couple of hours of receiving the lab results. The HSE has advised that an end-to-end turnaround time of two days for negative cases is now being achieved in about 80% of cases.

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