HSE says there will be 50,000 antigen tests available next week

The head of the country responsible for testing and tracing of HSE stated that if the maximum capacity of 20,000 to 22,000 PCR tests is reached, 50,000 antigen tests of close contacts will be provided from the testing center from next week.
Niamh O’Beirne said the sampling site tested 16,000 people on Monday. This number is expected to rise later this week and may exceed the maximum capacity figure early next week, when antigen testing will be used for close contacts.
Ms. O’Beirne said on Newstalk’s Pat Kenny program that the test surge is a mixture of walkers and close contacts.
“About 30% of the people actually showed up temporarily in the examination room, some were related to travel-this was the 5th day of the test after returning from overseas travel-and then about 10% were recommended by general practitioners, and the rest were close contacts By.
“Every day 20% to 30% of people are called close contacts-when we remove them from the test numbers, we will reduce the need for the website so that we can reach everyone very quickly.”
She added that some websites have a positive rate of as high as 25%, but fewer people use the service as a “guarantee measure”.
“At present, in order to plan well, we expect to deploy antigen testing early next week.”
Although the number of hospitalizations related to Covid-19 is still low compared to the highs of the pandemic recorded in January, HSE said on Monday that it is reviewing models and forecasts.
The Minister of Health Stephen Donnelly stated that he was “concerned that the large number of cases will put severe pressure on HSE”.
On Monday, 101 people were diagnosed with new coronary pneumonia, up from 63 people a week ago — 20 people are currently in the intensive care unit. At the peak of the third wave in January, 2,020 people were hospitalized with the disease.


Post time: Jul-21-2021