It will be done on a voluntary basis.
Some healthcare workers are going to be redeployed to private nursing homes to help tackle the spread of Covid 19.
The sector has been badly hit by the coronavirus nationwide. There are now almost 11,500 cases of the coronavirus in Ireland and 406 people have died. Dublin still accounts for the majority of cases while Leitrim has the fewest.
There are 408 clusters across the country and more than a third of them are in nursing homes. Nursing homes also account for almost half of the fatalities.
Now for the first time ever, nurses in the public health system are to be redeployed to private nursing homes to help tackle the spread of Covid 19.
Tony Fitzpatrick from the INMO says it will be done on a voluntary basis.
"Once there's full disclosure of the environment they're going into, once more than 2 staff at a time [can] go in ... our members and the members of the health sector unions will step forward in order to help these older persons at this particular time".
Meanwhile, the Director of National Virus Reference Laboratory says we are now testing almost 3,000 people every day – up from 1,500 last week.
