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

I thank Deputy McDonald for her remarks and for raising this issue. Since the new Government was formed and came into office at the end of June, we have been determined to build up our testing and tracing capacity. That is what has happened. Without question, the contact tracing dimension has come under extreme pressure in recent days, in particular over the weekend. I recall the Deputy asking some weeks ago about the target of 100,000 tests per week. We have now reached a testing capacity of 120,000 in our laboratories. We processed more than 115,000 tests in the past seven days. We continue to test in the community and in hospitals and we conduct serial testing in nursing homes, meat plants and direct provision centres.

The HSE informed me that we are meeting all the demand for testing from the community and hospitals. Yesterday was the highest day, with more than 12,500 appointments in community swabbing centres and that is in addition to acute swabbing and serial testing. Our laboratories have processed up to 19,000 swabs on a given day, the highest ever, and they have done this within their committed turnaround time of 24 hours or less. Our testing capacity at the moment is more than 120,000 weekly. That capacity will increase again in November and December. Capacity is increasing every week. We will continue to have offshore testing capacity during the winter.

The HSE informs me that on metrics, tests are completed end to end in less than three days, more than 95% of GP referrals get a same-day or next-day appointment, more than 90% of people get their result in less than 48 hours from swabbing appointment, and the overall end-to-end median is less than 2.2 days. Of course, there are always improvements to be made on that and to further consistency at the end of the testing process.

I do not have to go through all the serial testing, but 35,000 tests have been undertaken in 82 meat plants since 21 August, with 151 positive cases emerging. Some 3,300 tests have been carried out in direct provision centres, with 18 positive cases since 12 September. A total of 234,000 tests have been carried out on healthcare workers in 574 nursing homes since early July, with 631 positive cases. There are concerns about schools. The HSE says it has tested approximately 13,289 students and teachers, with 355 positives, which is a positivity rate of about 2.6%.

Recruitment has been ongoing. Currently, 400 staff are employed in contact tracing.

There will be 220 added before the end of next week and there will be ongoing additions. As the Deputy knows, we did not have a testing system at the beginning of the pandemic. Many front-line staff came from within the health service, for example occupational therapists and physiotherapists, and from other Departments, and they went back into services. At the moment substantial recruitment for contact tracing is going on. The first 700 people are through the interview process. Some 220 new staff have started already. There will be 74 next week and 128 will start on 2 November. They want to bring in about 60 to 70 new staff every week to work on contact tracing, ultimately to get to somewhere close to 800 contact tracers. It could be close to 1,000-----

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