News Reader.info

Private Covid-19 testing sites are being planned in Mayo and Kerry within the next few weeks by the company which runs the facility at airports in Ireland. RocDoc could potentially open up

to ten sites around the country if there is enough demand, with tests costing €99 to €159 depending on how quickly the results are needed. Possible locations include Meath, Louth and Galway.

The company yesterday opened a new coronavirus testing centre at Dublin Airport with the capacity to conduct 12,000 tests per day. David Rock, chief executive of RocDoc, said there were

plans to open two more testing centres in the west. “We are looking at ten other sites and are in final negotiations for some sites at the moment. We are trying to make this safe for people.

Some of the sites will be smaller,” he said. Advertisement “There are two candidates we are looking at, one is Mayo and one is in Kerry, but the final decision in terms of location has yet

to be made by us. All going well we hope to have them open in the next week or two.” Mr Rock said they were trying to keep out of cities as much as possible to ensure they do not bring

anyone who may have Covid-19 into an area where there are a lot of people. “Each site is set up for 300-500 tests per day as it stands during a lockdown scenario, if that changes we can

increase that capacity to thousands per day. But this side of Christmas it is more likely to be 300 to 500 per day,” he said. Yesterday members of the National Public Health Emergency Team

(Nphet) met to discuss the country’s exit from Level 5 restrictions in 11 days. It also emerged that Ireland’s mink population will be culled because of fears about its potential to spread a

new strain of the virus. The Northern Ireland executive agreed late last night to effectively re-introduce a lockdown. Restrictions will be eased from tomorrow until Friday, November 27,

with a strict two week “circuit breaker” thereafter. During that period all hospitality venues, gyms and churches will be closed. Advertisement There were 429 new cases of Covid-19 confirmed

in Ireland yesterday, along with four deaths. There have been 69,473 cases in total and 2,010 deaths. RocDoc said its private testing facilitates can help facilitate safer national and

international travel ahead of the Christmas period. The Dublin Airport facility is operating from the express green long-term car park and offers two tests: rapid LAMP and PCR testing, the

gold standard used by the HSE. Mr Rock said they were looking at other sites in Meath, Louth and Galway. “The bigger regional centres, we will need to service first. We will see how it goes,

if the demand is not there, there is no point in us rolling out more. We need to be aware of the financial impact,” he said. Mr Rock said their margins were “quite thin” but that they hoped

to be able to reduce the price of the test. Advertisement “This is really not a money horse. It is a way for us to help during a crisis. For the Dublin centre we have a 23-metre laboratory

going in, that’s a huge infrastructure. That’s not taking into account insurance, running costs and labour,” he said. “When the margins do increase, we are looking at reducing the price, we

want to make it as affordable to as many people as we can.” Earlier yesterday Sam McConkey, an infectious disease expert, blamed Halloween celebrations for the stall in progress in reducing

Covid-19 cases. “There’s some suggestion over Halloween there was essentially more socialising and partying than we had before,” Professor McConkey told _Morning Ireland _on RTÉ Radio 1.

“The optimist in me hopes that things will improve next week and the week after because we’re now back to normal life. Advertisement “The numbers may go down to half, maybe 100 to 200 cases

a day by the beginning of December. “The challenge will be keeping it there, keeping it down. That’s a really important challenge. None of us wants that oscillating up and down.”