''Overall we are in the top 5 or 6 of countries in the EU''.
The head of the HSE is defending Ireland's coronavirus testing system, saying it’s among the best in Europe.
Testing capacity has improved drastically over the past few weeks but the issue now is the turnaround time between being tested and receiving results.
The HSE says it’s taking on average 2.4 days but many doctors and patients say it’s longer than that.
CEO of the HSE Paul Reid believes our regime is among the best in Europe, ''overall we are in the top 5 or 6 of countries in the EU'', he said.
There are now 50 test centres nationwide, 40 labs and 17 hundred people doing contact tracing.
Meanwhile there is capacity there to carry out up to 13,000 tests a day but the Director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory say there’s only around a quarter of that demand at present.
Mr. Reid also said he is concerned about the knock on effect of the crisis will have on non Covid patients like those with cancer or heart conditions.
From today hospitals are now beginning to carry out non urgent surgeries which had been deferred because of the pandemic.
There are now almost 23,000 confirmed Covid 19 cases here and 1,458 people have lost their lives.
