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HSE CEO PAUL Reid said today there was “tension” with the Department of Health and NPHET last month about how Ireland planned to ramp up its Covid-19 testing capacity.
Letters published on Thursday show the HSE expressed concern over last month’s announcement by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) that testing for Covid-19 would be significantly expanded to cover 100,000 suspected cases a week.
A letter from the HSE chief executive Paul Reid to the Department of Health’s Secretary General, Jim Breslin, states “regrettably, I was taken very much by surprise by Dr [Tony] Holohan’s letter” on the expansion of Covid-19 testing.
In the correspondence to the secretary general, the HSE boss says “generally speaking, I have a good sense of the general direction of travel in advance of formally receiving the NPHET actions which are then progressed and monitored closely through the HSE’s National Crisis Management Team (NCMT) which I chair”.
He added that Dr Holohan’s announcement around testing was “at odds” with the process engaged with at Cabinet committee level and in meetings with the country’s top civil servant, Department of the Taoiseach Secretary General Martin Fraser.
“They are also at odds with the process in place with the HSE Board,” the HSE chief executive said.
Addressing the correspondence today, Reid maintained that himself and Dr Holohan are “on the same page” and said tensions have arisen across a number of public health matters during Covid-19.
“We’ve been on the same page throughout this and we’re on the same page now,” said Reid.
Reid added that it was “obvious” there would be tensions as public health officials worked to increase testing capacity in Ireland.
“There are tensions with many issues,” he added.
Since the letter was written on 19 April, Reid said the HSE, Department of Health and NPHET had come to an arrangement by way of a “shared management plan” as testing capacity was increased.
“But there was tension in terms of how we get there,” he said.
On Thursday, the HSE announced it aimed to have a 90% end-to-end turnaround time of three days on testing and contact tracing for Covid-19 positive cases by Monday.
Reid also confirmed that more than 270,000 coronavirus tests have been carried out across Ireland and that, by Monday, 15,000 tests per day would be carried out.
At this morning’s HSE weekly briefing, Reid also addressed the reporting of Covid-19 cases from the Mater Hospital in Dublin.
It follows controversy surrounding the delay of the official publication of some 244 cases at the hospital dating back to mid-March until Thursday.
He said he is satisfied that the reporting of Covid-19 cases from the hospital complied with legal requirements, despite an anomaly which emerged earlier this week.
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This Paul Reid fella comes across as a right spoofer. So after 3 weeks of telling us they can manage 100,000 tests a week would it not be proper order to say how this will be achieved, how many test centers, how many tests per center, how many staff in each center, if staff cannot work or for other reasons like a power failure etc is there a contingency plan that will maintain the 100k a week capacity. We should be given finer details on how they will do this or journalists should be asking these question. If they cannot do the 100k tests then we need to understand why and who is not doing their job.
They are on the same page, but apparently of two different books…
My oh my
We need 15 thousand tests a day to keep this thing under control
14th Apr (48,162 tests over last 7 days)
21st Apr (20’938 tests over last 7 days)
28th Apr (41,470 tests over last 7 days)
5th May (61,707 tests over last 7 days)
12th May (44,047 tests over last 7 days)
HSE says testing and tracing takes 9 days
@Sean Byrne: those figures are also based upon demand, particularly when the criteria to be eligible for a test was changed there were reports of some test centres operating below capacity as not enough people were being referred.
Where does it say 9 days though, the article says 3 days?
@D Mems: Yes these are the actual reported numbers of tests carried out. The article says “aimed to have a 90% end-to-end turnaround time of three days on testing and contact tracing”. The last actually reported median turnaround time from referral to test result is 5 days. The time it takes to trace all the contacts that an infected person has been in contact with was last reported to be 4 days.
@D Mems: But why was there spare capacity? Surely there were doctors, nurses, other hospital staff, nursing home staff and residents, care home staff and residents that could have received extra tests if there was spare capacity? They can’t be tested too often?
@Sean Byrne: I thought they were now doing the contact tracing once you were a suspected case, since about 2 weeks ago, so time start to finish should be 4 days if testing is ramped up. Still, a lot of transmission may occur within those 4 days
@NotMyIreland: firstly, you’d have to take all those medical personnel out of their normal setting to test them at those test centres, thus diminishing their availability to their actual jobs, but I think the real reason was because the bottleneck was the labs, not the testing, hence why they reduced referrals
were they asked whether they had fulfilled legal requirements, or if they had reported cases of cornavirus? why not give straight answers?
have your say