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The Health Minister has said the country is beginning to see the benefits of some of the coronavirus measures that the public has undertaken.<\/p>\nThe Health Minister has said the country is beginning to see the benefits of some of the coronavirus measures that the public has undertaken.<\/p>\n
Simon Harris said that if an individual was diagnosed with Covid-19 two weeks ago, they had, on average, been in contact with 20 people, but that number has now dropped to an average of three.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know, as a result of people staying at home, keeping their distance, we\u2019re making it harder for this virus to spread from one person to the other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is, quite frankly, the only way we\u2019re going to be able to slow it down, and the more we can slow it down, the more we can protect our health service in terms of the critical capacities of the need for those who do get sick.\u201d<\/p>\n
The minister told RT\u00c9 Morning Ireland that it will take another 10 days to fully ramp up lab services across Ireland.<\/p>\n
He admitted that the Government is seeing supply constraints similar to other countries across the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe situation we\u2019re facing here is not in any way unique to Ireland. I\u2019m very satisfied that the health service is doing everything humanly possible to ramp up testing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to that, and importantly, the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) yesterday adopted a recommendation from the chief medical officer (Tony Holohan) to further improve contact tracing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if you have somebody now who is symptomatic, and in certain groups, the contact tracing will now happen in advance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, more than 30,200 people have already had their test results through the labs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Harris said Ireland is carrying out more tests per head of population than most other countries.<\/p>\n
He added that he is particularly concerned people living in long-term residential settings, including nursing homes, and healthcare professionals.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, he met representatives from Nursing Homes Ireland after a total of 22 coronavirus outbreaks were reported in nursing homes.<\/p>\n
Mr Harris said the Government is looking at providing financial support to help nursing homes.<\/p>\n
The National Health Public Emergency Team (NPHET) has also recommended that the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) carry out a risk assessment of nursing homes to identify those at risk.<\/p>\n
Nursing homes will also be given more personal protection equipment (PPE) for staff, as well as providing isolation facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of this is already under way, but, from today, the HSE and the Department of Health will be talking further to nursing homes,\u201d Mr Harris added.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Ireland saw its highest total of deaths in a day since the start of the coronavirus crisis.<\/p>\n
The deaths of 17 people \u2013 four women and 13 men \u2013 were confirmed by the Department of Health.<\/p>\n
The latest figure takes the total number of Covid-19-related deaths in Ireland to 71.<\/p>\n
Tuesday also saw 325 new confirmed cases of Covid-19, taking the confirmed total to 3,235.<\/p>\n