By Vivienne Clarke
The chief executive of the HSE Paul Reid has said he has no doubt that this is going to be “a more difficult winter than we've ever faced before” as the HSE attempts to scale up services that had been stalled because of Covid-19.
“We are living with Covid, we just have to take hope and confidence and live differently and plan differently,” he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show.
Mr Reid said he had confidence and hope about the coming months, but he warned that people could not drop their guard in their adherence to public health measures, as they remain 80 per cent of the defence against the spread of Covid-19.
Testing and tracing
Ireland’s testing and tracing system compared favourably with the rest of Europe, he said, “we have the capacity and have sped up the turn around time. Have a strong testing and tracing system, I'm working on a plan now that brings us to the next level, we always want to improve on it. We will improve even further on it.
Testing and tracing was 15 per cent of defence, he said, 80 per cent was public health restrictions such as social distancing, hand washing etc.
“Testing is not a protection, we have a very low positivity rate. It is important, but equally important is where the case transmits.”
Mr Reid said there was no doubt that this was going to be “a more difficult winter than we've ever faced before because we're heading into winter and managing Covid and trying to scale up services, that we had to scale down during Covid so we've to manage those three dimensions".
Community assessment hubs which had been set up during the pandemic will be used during the winter to assess people for respiratory illnesses and filter out what is Covid and not Covid, he said.
“We do need a functioning economy and a functioning society, we need that to support our health service, because we know the impact of lockdown. We need to find that balance.
“People are looking for absolute clarity when we can only give them some unpredictability - that's the phase we're in.”
