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

There is a greater role for antigen testing in our response to Covid. We do need to be very much guided by the advice of our scientists and our public health doctors in this regard. They have concerns about the accuracy of antigen testing. It has been introduced at Dublin Airport and in Gorey for hauliers going to France. It is a requirement of the French Government, which accepts antigen testing to enter France. We do not accept it to enter Ireland; we only accept the PCR test in that regard. It does seem that antigen testing can be useful in an outbreak and it can be useful in identifying Covid cases where the person is symptomatic. The more symptomatic one is the more infectious one is, so it is useful in that regard also. The current advice is that it is not useful in screening because it would miss a lot of positive cases. It has been used in parallel to PCR testing in Letterkenny and a few other places. I have been told by the chief clinical officer of the HSE that it had missed a lot of cases that were picked up by PCR.

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