John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I was not going to talk about this publicly, but I recently had Covid. I would not advise anyone to catch it. It is not particularly enjoyable. However, I discovered from my experience the real benefits of antigen tests. In recent weeks I have talked to other people who have also had Covid, and this is only anecdotal evidence, but they spoke about the benefit of antigen tests to them. Having been through this, I think a real disservice to the country was done by the comments a year ago that antigen tests were "snake oil" and by the reluctance of NPHET to endorse them sooner. Again, I speak only from my anecdotal evidence and from talking to other people. I was absolutely fine, not a breeze whatsoever, one morning. I got a phone call from someone to say I was potentially a close contact. That individual was absolutely fine but, because I got that phone call, I took an antigen test, got a positive result and was able to go straight into self-isolation. Because I was able to do so, and I live at home with my family of five, nobody else got infected because I did not spend the two days wandering around meeting people until symptoms developed. That was all because of antigen testing. I have spoken to so many other friends and colleagues who have also had Covid recently who have said exactly the same thing. I refer to people on the bus into work who had a small cough or a small headache, decided to take an antigen test, got a positive result, went straight into isolation, waited for a PCR test and, when the PCR test result came, all of a sudden realised that symptoms were coming on at that stage. It just shows the benefit of antigen testing and how useful it is. It is great to see we are on it now and it is being used widely, but a real disservice has been done to this country by not getting on board with antigen testing sooner.