Covid-19 testing grinds to a halt at Páirc Uí Chaoimh and Croke Park sites
Concerns have been raised as testing for Covid-19 two of the State’s largest testing facilities has ground to a halt, despite official claims that daily sampling is being ramped up.
The news comes as the Government again appealed to the public not to travel this weekend to holiday homes and beauty spots amid widespread breaching of official protocols around social distancing.
As 28 further Covid-19 deaths were confirmed, gardaí roadblocks on main routes in cities across the country have been confronted with significant traffic flows of people heading away for the holiday weekend.
HSE staff at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork have taken just a handful of swab samples from people who have been referred for testing in recent days. The facility operates for just a few hours a day.
Limited activity was observed at Croke Park yesterday by the Irish Examiner.
It has fuelled concerns about the rate of sampling, which is designed to identify the prevalence of the virus in the community. The HSE has refused to release details about how many samples have been taken at the site, or to give a detailed day-by-day breakdown of the figures since the GAA stadium opened as a Covid-19 drive-through sampling centre in late March.
Responding to Irish Examiner queries last night, Colm Henry, the chief clinical officer of the HSE, said: “We have the capacity at these centres... to accommodate all the demand coming through that had existed from GPs. We have the capacity within hospitals to accommodate demand for testing and hospitals.”
However, it has been confirmed that the centre in Cork was shut because of a lack of reagent material needed to analyse samples taken from members of the public.
“The block was in the reagent for the lab, which we’re working on at the moment,” said Dr Henry. “There was a time a couple of weeks ago when Páirc Uí Chaoimh was closed as were other centres because we didn’t have the swab material. We succeeded in getting it.”
Addressing the low numbers going through the centre, Dr Henry said: “We haven’t had to open all testing centres. Whereas we can now through those testing centres accommodate the demand coming through right across the country. The block on anything we had was our ability to process those tests at lab level with reagents.
“It may be in the coming weeks that there will be, we will adopt or look for a more loose, more sensitive case definition, which will result in more people being referred for testing at a different stage in the cycle of this pandemic.”
Meanwhile, 28 more people have died from the coronavirus.
The number of confirmed cases in the State increased by 500, the highest increase in a single day to date.
According to the National Public Health Emergency Team, 15 of the patients who died were female, and 13 were male, with a median age of 84.
Of those who died, 19 of the patients had an underlying health condition. Some 22 of the deaths were located in the east, two in the northwest, two in the south, and two in the west.
This brings the number of deaths from the coronavirus to 263 in the Republic.
The number of known cases here has increased from 6,074 to 6,574.
Analysis by the Health Surveillance Protection Centre of 6,444 cases as of Tuesday shows the median age of known cases is 48.
Speaking after a briefing of political leaders, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said that more than 50,000 people are waiting to be tested.
“The areas of most concern that were articulated were the ongoing issues around PPE [personal protection equipment], the situation in relation to nursing homes and the entire situation on testing,” said Mr Martin.
“There were 51,000 people awaiting appointments for swab-taking and it seems to me that there is still a degree of work to be done on the testing front.
“So, suffice to say, the country is not where it would want to be in terms of the volume of testing and the turnaround of testing.”
