The headline we have been waiting years for...

End to Covid testing today

There has been so much talk in the past week about the end to the eviction ban and the vote of no confidence in the Government that one story was almost overlooked.

Covid testing will come to an end in Ireland from today (Thursday), March 30. It’s almost three years to the day since the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in this country.

So much has happened in that time. We went from an almost Armageddon-type scenario - the country was in the grip of fear and plunged into lockdown – to ‘normality’ again – back to complaining about the Government of the day and issues such as housing.

When we were in those early days of lockdown, confined to a 5km radius of our homes and hanging on every Covid update, waiting week to week to see if restrictions would ease, it was hard to believe we would ever see ‘normal’ again.

People were told they could not even hug their parents and grandparents; while schools, workplaces, shops, almost everything was shut down.

We have now come full circle and the end to testing signals the end of the pandemic.

The latest public health advice is that COVID-19 testing is no longer recommended for the vast majority of people.

Community testing centres and the self-referral portal for ordering PCR tests are no longer required, and both will close on March 30.

Back in the early days of lockdown, that was surely something that would have grabbed all the headlines – the news for which we yearned.

Immunity levels, through naturally acquired immunity and the vaccination programme, as well as the development of new treatments, are mitigating the worst impacts of COVID-19 infection.

The advice now is simply, if you have symptoms of Covid-19 or other viral respiratory illnesses, stay at home and limit contact with others until 48 hours after symptoms have resolved.

Also from Thursday, healthcare workers who are household close contacts are no longer required to do antigen tests. The current antigen-ordering portal on HSE.ie will also close. Further specific guidance is to issue to health and care workers.

Both PCR and antigen testing will continue to be used by doctors in hospitals and General Practice settings for the purpose of diagnosing and deciding on the provision of treatment for COVID-19 to a patient.

Public health teams may also decide that COVID-19 testing is required in the management of an outbreak in a high-risk setting.

As testing ends, we remember the 8,675 people whose deaths were linked to Covid-19 between March 1, 2020 and March 4, 2023, according to the latest report from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.

It translates to a rate of 169 people per 100,000 of population in County Cavan.

Not forgetting that, and the pain suffered by many families, the Covid pandemic is a remarkable story of human spirit and endeavour, how resilient we are as a people and what can be achieved when minds are motivated.

Now back to how to fix that housing crisis…