A shortage of swabs and reagents has been sighted.
A shortage of essential items such as reagents and swabs is leading to waiting times of up to seven to ten days for coronavirus test results.
Many testing centres across the country have faced problems because of a shortage of equipment.
Head of the Coronavirus Expert Advisory Group Dr Cillian de Gascun described it as disappointing and noted that this has been a challenging time.
''There's a huge amount of work going to otpimise and maximise the amount of supplies that we can secure over the coming week,'' he said.
''But there will be a delay for a number of people of perhaps 7-10 days depending when their sample was taken.''
He added that they are looking for alternatives in order to scale up the speed of testing results as quickly as possible.
