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AT THE MOMENT, it’s the job of GPs to refer people for a coronavirus test.
Their experience of testing so far hasn’t been good: when the “floodgates were opened” for testing, as one GP put it, there was a huge number of people who were anxiously waiting for a test result.
Although there are some signs that sampling and test result speed is slowly gathering pace, we’re not near the 24-48 hour turnaround we were promised.
And as long as Ireland’s testing capacity hasn’t yet reached 100,000 per week, the general consensus from GPs is that restrictions should remain in place.
To be considered for a test you need to be in a priority group, which includes: people aged over 70, people with certain medical conditions, healthcare workers, pregnant women; and to have displayed one of the various symptoms.
Ireland’s testing capacity – or its ability to test as many people as possible – is a major factor when it comes to assessing when the current Covid-19 restrictions can be lifted substantially.
The testing criteria is an important part of this equation too – without the right testing capacity, the government can’t set the criteria to be tested too wide, or else we’ll end up with a backlog of people waiting to be tested, or of people waiting for their results (or both).
This is what happened after the government widened the testing criteria from people who had been to an affected area or in contact with a confirmed case, to anyone who had both a fever and a persistent cough.
Widening the criteria out like this led to a backlog of 40,000 people waiting to be tested (to have a sample taken), which caused many people stress and anxiety. It also skewed the daily figures of how many confirmed cases there were in Ireland.
The backlog had to be eradicted by sending samples to Germany to be tested.
It had been announced that the testing criteria would be widened this week – but after the HSE raised concerns that it wouldn’t be able to carry out 100,000 tests a week by 27 April, as had been signalled by Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan and other health figures, this was rolled back to just a tweak of the current criteria.
At the most recent Department of Health briefing, Dr Tony Holohan said that there had been an increase in referrals since the latest tweak, but that they would decide today whether they would widen them out further.
We’ll make a decision [...] on whether we need to stick with the existing prioritisation criteria or whether we can remove them… we want to make sure it won’t have an effect beyond our capacity.
Cillian De Gascun, the director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory at UCD, said its current lab capacity is 60,000, that it will reach a capacity of 70,000 tests per week by the end of next week, and 100,000 by the week of 18 May.
The current wait time between when a sample is sent to the lab, and when a result is sent back is 24-48 hours, De Gascun said.
In all of this, general practitioners are the canary in the mine, as one Glasnevin GP put it.
Maitiú Ó Tuathail, another GP based in Dublin, said that GPs and the rest of the healthcare service had been “preparing for a surge that never came”.
He said that it was “unnerving”, in a way, as it could mean a surge will come later on, but added that even without a surge, it was “difficult to get a test and contact tracing is slow”.
He said that on Tuesday, he had a patient who was deemed suitable for testing at 8am, and by 4pm the patient was tested, which shows that they are speeding things up – but the reaction is mixed.
Three weeks ago people were waiting 10 days for a test [sample]. Now, it takes around 3-4 days to get a test result. It used to take two weeks [to get a result], but it’s still not 24-48 hours.
On the symptoms needed to get a test, Ó Tuathail said that they’ve been “tinkering with the edges”, and it won’t make a massive difference to GPs workload.
He said that the change for GPs “is minimal”, because the big limitation is the priority catagory for testing. Of those who come to him with Covid-19 symptoms, 80-90% of people are not in the priority group for testing.
In order for the lockdown to be lifted, Ó Tuathail says, we’d need a testing system similar to South Korea, where the result of a Covid-19 test is given 12-14 hours after a swab is taken, and once that result is given, tracing the contacts of that confirmed case begins immediately.
Although there was a general feeling that restrictions would be lifted by 5 May after Dr Tony Holahan and government figures announced that we had “flattened the curve to the point that there was no surge”, the fact that testing capacity isn’t where it should be is still a cause for concern.
Ó Tuathail said:
People want to see a change on 5 May, but there won’t be because we haven’t got the basics right yet. It’s helpful that they’ve come out and said that now.
Lucia Gannon, a GP based in Killenaule, Co Tipperary, said that there were “huge delays” in receiving test results at the beginning.
“The results were very delayed, and people that had the test were anxious,” she said.
We spent a lot of time reassuring them that the test results didn’t really matter, that it was more the clinical diagnosis.
“We haven’t encouraged them to be looking for them, we haven’t emphasised the results of the test, unless they had to get back to work, or something like that. If they were symptomatic, we just said ‘Look, that’s it, we think you have Covid, you need to self isolate’.”
She said she was more concerned about at-risk patients whose health might decline quickly, and added that robust testing was needed to get out of lockdown.
“The testing has to be broadened out so that we can get a picture of what we’re dealing with, and so we can open things up again. Until we can test as many as we possibly can, we have to stay in lockdown.”
Eamonn Shanahan, is a Kerry GP based in Farranfore, who also works as a medical officer in a community nursing unit in Killarney. Because of this, he was tested along with the other staff this week as part of the new strategy announced last week to test all residents and staff on long-term residental care settings.
He said that the last time testing criteria was widened out, or “the floodgates were opened” as he put it, the services weren’t at all prepared for it.
“There was a Monday early on that this thing was horrific. I mean, the whole system crashed. There just wasn’t the capacity to accept the orders for the tests, not to mind even the test themselves.”
“And so, the system crashed and crashed badly at that stage, and I think they’ve been slowly ramping things up since then.”
He said that although testing capacity has increased dramatically in recent weeks, he hasn’t had that many patients in the recent past that would have met the “very strict criteria” to be tested.
Previously, we would have been waiting four a weeks for a result to come back… [but] I am aware of the fact that the services have ramped up very substantially.
“My sense is that the results are coming back quicker,” he added.
Ray Walley, a GP in Glasnevin, Dublin, says that we need an “accessible, coherent, effective” testing service in order to lift restrictions.
He says that the results are coming back at mixed timeframes at the moment – sometimes they’re back quickly, sometimes they’re not.
“GPs have the most computerised system in the healthcare sector, so it makes sense that we would get the results first,” he said, adding that it’s the quickest way for patients to get a negative or positive result, which is important for contact tracing.
He said that from what he’s seen, positive tests seem to be coming back faster, but that’s just one casual observation.
The changes to the testing criteria this week represents “a modest widening” of testing, he said, which is a good way of ramping up the system before the criteria for testing is expanded further.
“We need an acceptable test-wait time and result time,” he said.
If we don’t have it for [this] level, we don’t have it for a surge.
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Screw the doctors, nurses, guards, fire service, ambulance service, teachers etc screw all the people who play an essential role in our society but make sure u look after the criminal scum who bleed us dry through welfare and legal aid, it’s not much of an incentive to get out of bed in the morning but that is where the divide between decent people and criminal scum lies
@ Thomas. What an ignorant comment to make.
@niamh what’s ignorant about that comment your home has obviously never been ransacked with personal belongings rifled through and your confidence completely destroyed, it’s people with an attitude similar to your own that have this country ruined, it’s a comment that’s obviously supported by the decent rational thinking people of this country
Have to agree with you Thomas. When there are lads going around free with 70 convictions for burglary at the age of 19 something is seriously wrong.
niamh elaborate on your point, don’t tell Thomas his point is ignorant and not back it up with a rational argument, his point is right on the money, whats irrational about it , explain
Tim, where are you getting that info? Not trying to be smart at all, I just hear shocking things like that every so often and have no idea where people are getting their facts from. Do you have links to information on conviction rates, sentences, recidivism rates etc. that can back that kind of thing up? I’m inclined to be uncertain about such shocking statements until I hear some evidence.
@aofie here is an example:
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/dublin-man-hijacks-car-to-get-to-court-less-than-a-mile-away-531565.html
What Tim says is true. The amount of times I’ve read a story about some junkie who gets off with a suspended sentence because he started treatment and also has a serious history of convictions is unbelievable.
What Damien McCarthy says is also true, some people just don’t have respect for the law. Why would they? They’re not being made respect it.
Niamh, few posts later and it transpired you don’t even know who hands out sentences in our legal system and yet you have the brass neck to accuse Thomas of ignorance. This is pure doublespeak – liberals have redefined the term ‘ignorant’ from ‘not knowing about the subject’ to ‘not agreeing with us liberals’.
Why blame the “criminal scum” for guarda stations being shut. The reason for this happening is because the people you all voted as leaders have decided you should do without guarda stations because banks ran the country into the ground and now you are having to pay for their mistakes
@Thomas Noone & his green thumbers. How will dividing society into essential service workers and criminal scum address the problems you are concerned about? That what you’re getting at Niamh? We all ask questions about why manslaughter convictions are given when we believe murder would be appropriate. We’re all disgusted when someone commits a serious crime when out on bale or early release. Calling such people scum might make you feel better, but will it make the slightest difference to problem? How about some rational solutions…
Ther was a time a well aimed smack from a Gardai baton could put the worst offender back on the straight and narrow for a while but it is all about the criminals rights now and screw everyone else! STOP ALL WELFARE FOR SCUMBAGS AND USE THE FUNDS SAVED TO PAY THE GARDAI WHAT THEY ARE WORTH!
Wahay, foggy lad for Taoiseach, we need more like you mate!!
There are an awful lot of guards unfortunately that are just as big scumbags as any street hood. You don’t have to go far to hear or experience examples of corruption in the force. The Guards as a force need to be completely overhauled and many of the senior ones removed from the force. They need to start acting like a professional force and remove fire the ones that are not. The Roman Catholic Church destroyed its reputation through corruption, FF destroyed itself through massive corruption and criminality, the Guards will be the next body to loose the shine.
@tim there are not alot of gardai as bad as the scum they police and there are not alot of examples of corruption in the force, there are some bad eggs and some corrupt individuals in every job and in a force of about 11000 the stats are overwhelmingly on the good guys side
If you stopped a criminals welfare wouldn’t he or she be more likely to commit further crimes for the sake of survival? It’s not like there are millions of employers looking to hire ex-cons these days now is it?
Right on Tim Henchin!
Just made a similar point in reply to you on the other thread on this subject.
Its the free legal aid thing that gets me, that they get it every single time theyre in court…. there should be a limit to the amount of times the state pays to defend these scumbags. The same is true with malicious lawsuits which have become a way of life for a lot of the travellers, because of the free legal aid they can take a bullshit case right up to the high court and have nothing to loose, the unfortunate person being sued is better off settling out of court because of the legal fees they would have to pay.
@Niamh NiDhonachu clearly @Thomas has a very valid point in what he is saying, ya shudnt get involved in something ya dont seem to understand.
@conor there is no evidence to suggest arming police forces leads to a rise in armed criminals. however there is evidence to show that more criminals in Ireland are armed, while the people we send to deal with them are unarmed, something is flawed in that logic surely.
I think Niamh you will see Thomas was not actually saying ” screw the etc etc” read it properly and than apologise…. This country indeed , indirectly has more regard for the welfare of scum that the decent .
Maybe if you guys were packing some weaponry the scum would think twice before shoving broken glass in your face.
Terrible idea. More petty criminals would also carry guns. There would be a huge increase in innocent people and guards losing their lives in crossfire.
I don’t think treating guards worse, cutting wages and arming them more is a recipe for success. And releasing people to save money after the huge investment it takes to find and prosecute them is a false economy too.
I would not serve as a guard for the specific reason that they do not get armed. Very dangerous out there
Not the best idea,give the cops guns and the scumbags will load up even more.
Connor, Emma, so the logic goes that if the Gardai are armed and tough the criminals will be armed and tough. The same logic implies the reverse is true – the softer the Gardai the softer the criminals and by the extension of the same logic if one was to remove the Gardai all together the criminals would go away too. I don’t hink this is the way it works.
Furthermore, we Irish are always trying to be good Europeans and distance from the UK. So why is it that we are following the UK (failed) model of softly-softly policing? Nowhere on the continent you will find toothless police ‘armed’ with the uniform and authority alone. Security forces patrolling the airports and streets of France and Germany cold be deployed to Kandahar as they are and by no means be inferior in firepower. Our Gardai on the other hand struggle in a pub brawl.
dom i agree, too many little men have joined the guards in the last ten years, a security force HAS to look like a deterent, before it gains the respect it needs to become one, not like a skinny small bloke that got a hard time in school and is now taking it all out on the masses by handin out speeding fines with a hand full of ignorance and a power buzz
Here here, more pay is deserved by front line public servants and a bit of recognition is needed for the work of prison officers who have to deal with the scum everyday, who are abused and assaulted daily. There’s too much negative publicity around what they do and have to put up with.
The Guards should be protected (as a judge is) over pay and they should also be armed to the teeth against the scum bags out their,
Niamh,yes you are right say no more because you patently do not understand the point at all. The bleeding hearts have the country ruined. Gardai do a very tough job in an environmemnt that is frought with danger. I would never let any of my sons join the Gardai as I would be terrified for them. This country would be in a worse state only for the Gardai. Cutting their wages and numbers just demoralises them and other frontline staff like prison officers,nurses,etc etc. Thank god there are men and women that are brave enough to join the Gardai and deal with the horrible things most of us never see, fatal car crashes,violence, disfunctional people and everything inbetween.
With regard to garda members suffering negative equity, don’t garda get a rather gererious allowance of 50% paid off their housing costs and also for a member of the garda to complain about being bullyed by the people that police the Garda, I think is a bit ironic.
No, doc! Where did you get that little gem?!
Doc, your talkin tru your backside son!
@ Adrian, I understand the article very well and i never said i disagreed with what was said in it. But I’m being shot down for disagreeing with someone’s comment.
Well said Adrian!!! Every word you said in your great comment I agree with.you 100%!!
Fair play foggy lad, a man wit a bit of cop on.
Where did you pull this 50% off housing costs out of???
his arse Dan
I simply asked a question, please excuse the lack of a question mark. However, I believe that the Garda receive an allowance( not a wage payment) for housing costs due to being stationed any where in the country, if this is untrue I am sorry for any confusion caused.
Any one walking around with their hand stuffed down the front of their dirty tracksuit whilst spitting should get a clipping
I don’t think we appreciate just how anomalous having an unarmed police force is.
The exact list seems to be dispute, but there seem to be only about ten odd countries in the worldworking this system, at least according to here: http://www.policespecials.com/forum/index.php?/topic/32618-countries-with-unarmed-police/.
The Gardaí have done a fantastic job policing Ireland with only taser guns, batons, and recourse to armed backup, and that’s certainly the ideal situation, but as gangland crime continues to pose an increasing threat to society it’s time to question whether keeping the Gardai unarmed is really a tenable arrangement in the long term.
Yeh, let’s have more of “BANG BANG…stop or I’ll shoot”
“Two Gardai Assaulted Each Day”
But how many citizens are needlessly assaulted by Gardai each day?
what a stupid statement!
People are assaulted by Gardai all the time.
I’ve walked past thousands of guards in my life and never been assaulted. What is it that I’m doing wrong I wonder?
@Paddy, I was just about to say that…
Are you going to give us the answer Paddy?
I feel sorry for the Garda the shit they have to put up with from ugly cunts in grey track suites and then old over paid fools of judges handing light sentences . Their moral must be very low.
How Bizarre, good tune humphreys
“Back in the 60s and 70s, perhaps people had a lot more respect for a member of the Garda Síochána. But now people have no regard for the law. It could be as a result of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, but people have no regard. If there’s a stiffer penalty, and tough legislation, it will send out a clear message.”
Is it possible that part of this is that many cops have a lot less respect for people too – as all are products of the same society and this becomes a feedback loop.
Also here a moral conudrum. Should i have respect for members of Garda Síochána who rounded up kids who ran away from institutions of abuse. Why should anyone have respect for people who carry out that kind of work. Or respect for a significant number of bullies and thugs involved in policing in inner city Dublin. Or in fact the expression of support of violence as voiced in many of the comments above.
Its shite that Garda get assaulted, but alot of them in my experience aren’t shy at dishing it out either.
http://www.kenfoxe.com/2010/03/terence-wheelock-and-his-injuries/
That quote from the article caught my eye too Mark.
Along with the valid points you’ve made I would like to add that when proven instances of Garda corruption go unpunished like for instance in the McBrearty and Shortt cases in Donegal respect for the police is undermined and that’s not because of a ‘cocktail of drugs and alcohol’ but a cocktail of coverup and unaccountability.
The appetite for sanction of errant officers seems to increase however as the ranking of the individual member decreases and that affects morale.
Yeah, nothing to do with hippie generation destroying authority for the last 5 decades. It’s the f***ing Gardai beating people randomly on the streets with no respect.
“A bit of recognition is needed for the work of prison officers who have to deal with the scum everyday”
I’m pretty sure that they had an idea that this might happen when they signed up to be a guard???
Do gardai sign up to be prison officers?
EH @ Gardai and prison officers are different services !!!!
What a bizarre thread to this article!
Garda uniforms do not suggest authority or instill respect in the way that they are intended. Even the word “garda” or “gardai” sounds ridiculous. It sounds too close to a “guard”, perhaps someone guarding a warehouse or guarding a field of sheep. Police should hope for a far greater sense of authority than this in order to be able to do their jobs right. They should either call themselves “police” or choose another more effective name. It would really help them to do this.
I realise that navy is a colour of authority so that’s fine but aside from the navy colour, garda uniforms do not do what they are supposed to do.
Blueshirts?
ha ha very quick mark!! :)
Their shirts are indeed blue
I love the word Garda and Gardaí. Even like when people say Guards. Don’t like police half as much. Garda conjures up an image of them being there to protect law abiding citizens. Police not quite the same IMO…
Mick, this isn’t the 70′s anymore! Where did you here that all Gardaí are firearms trained? More disinformation from uninformed people!
@ David. That is what I meant sorry, Im aware of how the system works. I know quite a few guards. And it’s a tough job. And what u said only highlights the prob I had with the very first point made. At the end of the day the judge has final say. But clearly I must be missing something here with the first point being made with all the thumbs down I got. So I’ll say know more. As someone else said I don’t know what I’m talking about. Clearly one isn’t allowed express their opinions!
well what IS your opinion then niamh?
Your still not making any sense Niamh!
Of all the threads I’ve read on journal this has to be the crazyist ever. Obviously a lot of comment deletions.
I was thinkin the same thing !
Hey Damien, should get the journal to check their printing equipment, in the photo at the start of the article it would seem as though your halo has disappeared….
I am unfortunatly old enough to remember the 70s and 80s, and as a former justice department employee, i also remember the “Garda Heavy Gang”,a group of hard drinking gardai who specialised in beating confessions out of suspects on the premise that if said suspect was not guilty of the crime that was being investigated , the suspect was probably guilty of some other crime. Remember Nicky Kelly, Oscar Brethnach, and many others. These individuals appeared n court black and blue from “falling in their cells”, or they were “beating each other up whilst in custody”. The behaviour of this band of uniformed thugs eventually led to costly compensation payments and convictions being quashed. the pendulum swung the other way and suspects were treated with the utmost deferance and respect and the victims were more or less ignored and forgotten, thus leading to a fall in respect for the Guard, and indeed many unsuitable individuals became guards at that time, and there is a level of corruption within the force that would not have been seen 30 or 40 years ago, this can be as simple as expecting work to be done for a reduced rate or free , and their fear of the Garda Ombudsman speaks volumes about their motives. All Gardai are trained in firearm use and they can be armed at very short notice. Whilst the corruption scandals reported are few the collateral damage to the force reputation has been monumental. That is why they do not command respect anymore, just like politicians and clerics. The nod and wink cute hoor syndrome has become endemic in irish society, one has only to look at the estimated figures for the black economy. Who created the gangland culture in Ireland ? The Irish People , The Government, (or lack of same). the Greed of everyone of us. Money, Power and sex, the 3 things that will destroy any man/woman. Put a beggar on horseback and he will ride you to hell.
The legislation dealing with the temporary release of prisoners (http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2003/en/act/pub/0034/print.html) lays down several criteria that prisoners have to meet before being released temorarily from prison.
The Gardaí can provide the Minister of Justice with a report/recommendation on a particular prison. Would this not prevent the violent criminals -mentioned in the article – from being released?
An alternative to putting people in over-crowded jails is for the courts system to impose fines on individuals for certain crimes. Community service schemes could also be useful as not only would they keep certain people out of jail (and so decrease prison population numbers/over-crowding), these schemes could also benefit the community.
Community service would be so much better for certain types of crimes, than taking up space in over crowded prisons
Doctors, nurses and teachers play a very important role in society, I don’t see why they are included in the above comment. That’s my point. The guards are the ones who are responsible for handing out sentences etc.
The guards do not hand out sentences… that is the courts. The guards do the hard leg work and have been only fantastic this day last year when my car was broken into, and earlieri n the year over the death of a friend. The ignorance on this thread is astounding.
niamh for christ sake cop on! read the initial point again, ……..and then maybe a second time,
Niamh you should jog on while you have a tiny bit if dignity left you are making a fool out of yourself, do a little bit of research and come back when you are ready, cringe!
Dis is a joke, please stop
Judges dish out the sentences
Call the Straz boy, call the straz…
have your say