Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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1360. To ask the Minister for Health if he has taken steps to review and recommend antigen testing to screen test pupils in schools (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14050/21]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The HSE has deployed ADTs for use in specific indications in the acute hospital setting, and as part of the response to outbreaks in the community setting in symptomatic vulnerable populations and their close contacts, supported by appropriate clinical governance and operational arrangements. This includes updating the case definition for SARS-CoV-2 to accept notification of positive results from ADTs undertaken in the public health system and reporting of such cases to the COVID Care tracker and to the Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting (CIDR) information system developed to manage the surveillance and control of infectious diseases in Ireland.  

Considerable work has been undertaken to date to evaluate the use of ADTS in an Irish context and this will continue on an ongoing basis due to the role they can have in the national testing strategy. In particular, further setting-specific ADT validation work continues to be undertaken by the HSE. Antigen testing will not, however, replace the requirement for large scale PCR testing which remains the gold standard for community testing. 

I have also set up a group, chaired by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Mark Ferguson, to examine the use of rapid tests in the community, and I will be considering the recommendations of this group. 

On an ongoing basis, NPHET considers and reviews, based on public health risk assessments, how best to target testing to detect, and mitigate the impact of, the virus across the population. This includes keeping Ireland’s national testing policy under continuing review.