Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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284. To ask the Minister for Health the manner in which the Covid-19 pen-and-paper tracking and tracing system is currently configured; the estimated full-year cost of operating the system; if there were reductions in the numbers of staff involved in the system following the introduction of the Covid-19 tracker application. [27807/20]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The HSE and the Department have worked intensively over the last number of months to put in place a comprehensive, reliable and responsive testing and tracing operation.  We now have capacity in place to test 15,000 people a day (100,000 pw).

Rigorous contact tracing and automatic testing of close contacts, large-scale testing in outbreak situations and other serial testing programmes means we are finding more cases than we would have previously.

The testing and contact tracing operational and resource model has been designed to flex up and down as needed. The HSE has over recent weeks ramped up resources significantly, and will continue to do so, including optimising and maximising our laboratory testing capacity.

The current Testing pathway consists of a number of stages:

- On referral from a GP, an appointment is made for an individual at a Testing Centre,

- Swab is taken from the individual.

- Swab has then to be transferred to a Laboratory for testing.

- Result is recorded and advised to Centre.

- Individual is informed of result.

The HSE are constantly monitoring all stages of the process to increase efficiency of each of the individual components of the testing pathway and to reduce the turnaround times as much as possible.

Earlier this year, the HSE estimated maximum potential costs for testing and contact tracing for the full year of €414 million. This figure should be considered an estimate of the maximum costs as it is based on activity levels of 100,000 tests per week every week, and actual costs may be lower and reflective of actual activity levels earlier in the year.

The Government has to date approved just over €200 million to cover the costs of testing and contact tracing this year.  The estimated expenditure on testing and contact tracing to 18 September was €120.96m. 

The Covid Tracker App was introduced to complement the manual contact tracing system and integrate into it, and did not replace any element of it. Therefore, no reductions in staff resulted. In fact, in recent weeks the number of staff engaged daily in Contact Tracing has increased significantly to almost 300.  Furthermore, the HSE is currently in the process of recruiting over 500 contact tracing staff all around the country.