Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The way we will beat this virus is through collective action led by the Government and individual actions which people take in their everyday lives. We all appreciate that individual actions are required, with all of us following those public health guidelines, and Government action to ensure we put the infrastructure in place. Part of that infrastructure involves testing, and we are now testing 100,000 people per week. There are 12,000, 13,000 or 14,000 tests every day. This is polymerase chain reaction, PCR, testing which is the gold standard in testing. Many other countries are not using PCR and are using less specific and less sensitive types of testing, such as antigen testing. There is a role for that type of testing, but we are using PCR testing at the moment. We are testing more people per head than many other countries that are often cited as models for dealing with the coronavirus, such as New Zealand and Germany. We are well up there in terms of testing.

On tracing, I did see that report, although I do not know exactly where it came from. I think it was anonymous but I may be wrong. I cannot speak for the HSE on the details of what resources are being provided for tracing but I totally agree with the Deputy that tracing is a crucial part of our response to the coronavirus. Those departments need to be resourced and they have been in the past few months. People from the Defence Forces, teachers and civil servants were trained up. Huge numbers of people were brought in to supplement the standing public health teams and that needs to be scaled up again, if it has not been done already.

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