Covid-19 (Health): Statements
Dail Éireann — 2020-04-16
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

I am sorry. On the issue of swabs, to be clear, I have asked the HSE and it is my understanding from the HSE that swabs do not expire and were not discarded. The backlog, as the Deputy knows, has been processed with the assistance of a German laboratory and additional laboratory capacity here. We are now seeing, on average, 1,200 swab requests per day from our GPs. That does not include our hospitals.
Finally, in terms of contact tracing, I do not know the individual details. I am happy to take them from the Deputy.
We now have nine contact tracing centres, with 1,700 people trained to date and an average of just over 200 people per day deployed to these centres during the last week.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:16+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-04-16