Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. These are very important points. The Deputy said it took five days to get a test. That is not acceptable.

I would like that checked out and the details followed through because it is not in accordance with the national average - that is not just waiting to get a test but right through - which is about 2.2 days. Some 85,000 tests were done last week and there is a capacity to do 100,000 tests. It is one of the better testing systems in Europe. Right now, we are testing more people per population than most. Some 52,000 tests were taken in the community, 20,000 in acute settings while 13,000 serial tests have been undertaken. That is a significant amount of ongoing work. That is why the delays in the case raised by the Deputy have to be fed back into the system to ensure it does not happen again.

A letter was issued last week to all schools, together with a HSE document entitled, Schools Pathway for Covid-19, the Public Health Approach. It sets out the approach to managing isolated confirmed cases of Covid-19 within a school community, as well as the principles which will underpin the management of outbreaks, or potential outbreaks, and the aligned testing strategy within an educational facility.

It is important to note that the response to confirmed cases or outbreaks of Covid-19 in the community or in a school is responsibility of and will be led and managed by the HSE departments of public health. It is at pains to state that all decisions as to appropriate actions following a confirmed case or outbreak will be made by its teams in the context of a full public health risk assessment. Any actions to be taken by the school will be informed and guided by the HSE departments of public health. School management will be informed as and when actions, such as the exclusion of children or staff, partial or full closure, are deemed necessary on public health grounds. If the school is not so informed, it has not been deemed necessary by the HSE departments of public health.

Again, the HSE has stated the definition of close contacts within a school will be variable and will be determined by a risk assessment that will take account of individual factors within each school or each class. It will not be automatically assumed that a whole class will be deemed as close contacts. Close contacts will be notified and advised to restrict their movements and present for testing on day zero and day seven. Close contacts will restrict their movements for 14 days, even in the event that Covid-19 is not detected in both of these tests.

There is no blanket policy to test entire classes or years. The testing strategy will be aligned to the public health risk assessment which may recommend widespread swabbing in a class or school under HSE mass testing procedures. Some of these have occurred. Up to 3,000 have been done in various scenarios with a positivity rate of about 73. I can check those figures and send them to the Deputy.

A letter did go out. A template is available. Within that template, however, there are significant variables and discretion in terms of the risk as assessed locally on the ground by the HSE departments of public health.

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