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Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland
HSE
Contact tracing to be extended to suspected cases of Covid-19
A team of 1,400 health officials will work to trace and contact people.
4.41pm, 1 Apr 2020
24.1k
22
CONTACT TRACING WILL now be carried out for those suspected of having Covid-19 under new measures to tackle the virus, the Health Minister has said.
Simon Harris said a team of 1,400 health officials will work to trace and contact people who have been in close quarters with suspected cases, instead of only confirmed positive cases.
Harris was speaking at the new facility in Citywest Dublin, where more than 1,000 beds are being made available for those who need to self-isolate.
He said: “As of the recommendation yesterday and working with our GPs, if there are suspected cases of Covid-19 the contact tracing can start before you get the positive result.
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“That seems like a sensible precaution because the whole purpose of the testing and contact tracing is to try and identify the virus as much as possible and isolate it to slow down the spread.
“There will also be contact tracing for suspect cases before they’re confirmed. And now that we have the resources in terms of 1,400 people, that seems like a sensible thing too.
“The national public health emergency tracing team has now said we should not actually be waiting for a suspect case to be confirmed before contact tracing so if there are suspected cases of Covid-19, the contact tracing can start before you actually need a positive test result.”
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said there will be delays in the coming weeks with both testing and receiving results due to global shortages of equipment.
He added: “It is important to bear in mind, getting your test results in itself doesn’t actually determine whether or not you get any better. This is a virus that has no treatment.
“So the fact that somebody is delayed in getting their test results doesn’t actually determine in any way when they get better or not, but it does help us to identify more cases and do more tracing.”
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Not that simple – there’s no point identifying a cancer early through screening unless a) you can do something about it and b) you can reliably identify which people would suffer more harm from the cancer than from the treatment.
Screening for disease isn’t a benign activity – it can lead to significant harm to patients.
Cardiovascular disease’s are the number one killer globally according to WHO . This study relates to 2008 when 17.3 million people died (representing 30% of all global deaths and is estimated to reach 22 million deaths per year by 2030)
Aids on the other hand has infected 70 million people in total globally , killing 35 million people so far and those numbers are declining because of better medication .This statistic is also from the WHO website .:)
Excellent news. These blood tests are vital diagnostic tools. I saw on tv where a simple test developed in Ireland using just blood is identifying people at risk from cardiac disease. These people apparently have sticky platelets. This test is already in use in Beaumont Hospital . Medical research is always an area I try to donate to. Your money could potentially help millions . That’s some return for your donation.
Can you please supply the name, location and principle investigators in the U.S. study you cite? There is a great deal of research going on in the areas of cancer epigenetics and some companies have been able to diagnose certain cancers with 75-90 percent accuracy with simple blood tests. (See http://medcitynews.com/2014/10/startups-breast-cancer-patients-pink-ribbon/ for more info.) Further, certain fatty acids have been recognized as markers for certain cancers–such as germ cell tumors and neuroblastoma, for decades (e.g. HVA and VMA) so this may or may not be “news.” At any rate, unsubstantiated reports are neither informative nor helpful; they are rumorsand typically do more harm than good.
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