By Vivienne Clarke
Immunologist Professor Paul Moynagh has said that Ireland should be striving to increase testing for Covid-19 to 15,000 a day, a target he believes is achievable.
"Every positive case that can be identified will help reduce the rate of transmission", he said.
Prof. Moynagh, who is also head of the Kathleen Lonsdale Institute for Human Health at NUI Maynooth, added that because so much of the infection and transmission comes from people who are asymptotic, it was really important to try to capture the level of infection in the community.
Ways to bypass the current bottleneck need to be examined, he said. It should also be investigated if the pharmaceutical sector can provide support, so testing can be scaled up
Meanwhile Paddy Mallon, an infectious disease physician at St Vincent’s hospital and Professor of Microbial Diseases at UCD school of medicine has called for a slowing down of community testing for Covid-19 and a ramping up of testing for health care workers.
It would be more beneficial to keep more health care staff at work, he said.
While “a huge amount of work” is going on into seeking out alternative options for testing, “for the moment we need to accept we cannot do it right, so for the next week or two the focus should be on health care workers.”
Prof Mallon said that at the moment the rate of increase of admission to intensive care units was steady and Ireland had so far managed to avoid the “tidal wave” of cases currently being experienced in London and New York.
“So far we’ve avoided that. If we avoid the tidal wave we can slow the creep of cases in intensive care, the rate at which we’re putting stress on ICUs.”
Prof Mallon said that if the rate of admission to intensive care continues to increase then that would not be sustainable.
“We are now on a knife edge and the only thing that is going to protect the health system is the measures we’re taking.”
He said that if by next week the situation is the same then the country will have to look at starting to push back which will mean ramping up community testing and to avoid new infection coming into the country.
There are very few countries not taking measures to protect their borders, he said. “The longer we do nothing the more concerned I’d be.”
