A member of the National Public Health Emergency Team says it’s disappointing that people are being forced to do their own contact tracing.
It’s emerged people who tested positive for COVID- 19 over the weekend are being asked to alert their own close contacts, due to record new cases.
It comes as Level 5 restrictions come into effect at midnight tonight.
The chair of NPHET's modelling group, Professor Philip Nolan, says the backlog in tracing is due to unprecedented infections.
"None of us until recently certainly were predicting 1200 cases per day this early in the winter."
"That workload has come on the HSE much quicker than any of us have expected and there's a lesson in it", he added.
Primary Principals Already Forced To Contact Trace
Meanwhile, some primary school principals are already spending weekends contact tracing and arranging COVID-19 testing for families.
352 positive cases have been recorded in schools and childcare settings so far.
Fascinating stuff on @PatKennyNT. School principals doing contact tracing & telling families about their Covid testing details. One principal said “I’m having to make public health decisions”. “Our schools are dealing with a global pandemic on a wing and a prayer"
— Shane Beatty 🎙 (@ShaneBeattyNews) October 21, 2020
Tiernan O'Neill, principal of Moyross National School in Limerick said the system is "completely overwhelmed."
"I've been left in the invidious position of contacting staff and parents at weekend and at night time."
"I'm making public health decisions that I'm in now way qualified to make."
