‘Lab closure due to case of Covid will not have an adverse effect on testing,’ HSE
THE Health Service Executive insists there will be ‘no negative impact’ on testing, despite a temporary laboratory shutdown.
The National Virus Reference Laboratory will not process any Covid-19 swabs this weekend, including bank holiday Monday, or next weekend due to staff shortages.
One member of one of the two Covid-19 testing teams has tested positive for the virus, resulting in the entire team having to restrict their movements.
The issue was raised in the Dáil yesterday by Sinn Féin TD Louise O’Reilly, who asked what the implications were of the temporary shutdown, saying she was ‘very concerned’ about it.
Ms O’Reilly said the country was placed into a second lockdown, in part, due to a lack of testing and tracing capacity.
The NVRL conducts in the region of 600 swabs per day. Director of the NVRL Dr Cillian De Gascún told the RTÉ News at One that because pre- emptive measures were taken to split the team in two back in March, there will be no impact on overall testing.
‘We split into two teams to ensure that if one of the teams were affected that we will be able to continue to deliver the service. Obviously back in March, April, May, it was more significant when we were doing a far greater proportion of the national testing.
‘But again, thanks to the work the HSE and the department have put in over the course of the last
‘We will be able to continue service’
number of months the majority of testing from the community is now performed at Enfer [laboratory in Naas] and, obviously, all of the hospital laboratories have capacity on site as well,’ he said.
Solidarity People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett told the Dáil the situation was ‘serious’ and ‘ shocking’. ‘ It contributes to undermining the fight against Covid-19… it is the responsibility of the Government and the failure of Government to recruit enough people to testing, to build up the testing capacity to the degree necessary to fight Covid-19,’ he said.
The HSE has recently bolstered its weekly testing capacity from 100,000 tests per week to 120,000 tests per week.
It told the Mail yesterday: ‘NVRL ordinarily process around 600 swabs per day. Over the course of this weekend and next these swabs will be completed by community labs.
‘The HSE processes approximately 17,000 tests per day. These measures will have no negative impact on testing responses as we are still working within our available capacity.’
When asked if it has a contingency plan in the outcome of large scale outbreaks of Covid-19 in test labs throughout the country, the HSE said: ‘The HSE has developed a Covid-19 laboratory model in which capacity is in place, across a number of laboratories, in order to spread the risk in the instance of a particular provider having an issue. We also use one of our European laboratory partners, where required, for additional capacity as part of our laboratory resilience.’
Labour leader Alan Kelly said staff shortages should not be an issue if testing is in such demand. ‘This is extremely concerning at a time when we are processing a record number of tests and case numbers are so high. Minister Donnelly needs to state how this will affect the processing of tests and outline what contingency measures will be put in place to ensure all Covid tests are processed in a timely manner,’ he said. ‘The National Virus Reference Laboratory carried out most of the testing until a number of months ago and it should not be forced to close due to staff shortages. This is the second staffing issue within less than a week after the tracing debacle last weekend.’
Further outbreaks of Covid-19 in laboratories here will result in a greater dependence on tests being processed in Germany, the Irish Daily Mail has learned.
In May, the Irish Air Corps started to fly deliveries of Covid tests to a German lab to alleviate the country’s massive backlog of 35,000 swabs waiting to be analysed.
But as the number of testing labs in Ireland grew from 25 to 46, the dependency on health experts from abroad significantly reduced.
A HSE spokesman told the Mail that it has a ‘surge capacity’ in place at some of its laboratories, including in Germany, which can be activated for a short period in the event of excessive demand or if an issue – like an outbreak of Covid – arose. All parts of our health services plan to mitigate the risk of an outbreak and ensure plans are in place.
‘We now have over 120,000 laboratory capacity, which we will continue to build on throughout November and December. In addition, we have surge capacity in place at some of our laboratories, which can be activated for a short period in the event of excessive demand or an issue in one of our labs.’
Last month, the HSE reached a deal with its German lab associate to create surge capacity to carry out up to 2,000 additional Covid19 tests a day – beyond the current daily capacity of 17,000 tests – should it be required over winter.