By: Michael O’Farrell – Investigations Editor.
ONE of the country’s foremost scientists has called on the Government to build a national pandemic testing laboratory to ensure Ireland can quickly deal with the next pandemic.
Professor David McConnell also said the kind of testing regime required to beat the current Covid-19 virus needed to be massively improved and led by a can-do figurehead such as Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary.
‘I have thought of his name several times,’ the recently retired pro-chancellor of Trinity College Dublin told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘I thought to myself that is the kind of person – the kind of figure we need – in order to make this kind of thing happen.’ Mr McConnell – who is credited with leading the development of genetic engineering and biotechnology in Ireland – said he fears a second wave of coronavirus this winter if the Government does not completely rethink its lockdown exit plans with a new national testing agency to the fore.
‘I’m afraid there’s a serious danger this will drag on – that the release from lockdown will be very much slower than people hoped. Alternatively, there will be relaxation and there will be a re-emergence.
‘We are an island – that gives us a terrific advantage. We should eliminate the virus and if we do not I very much fear that there will be a resurgence of it and it will happen with the next flu season which is a very serious compounding factor. I’m really worried about that.’
Speaking from Kerry where he is cocooning with his wife, the emeritus professor of genetics questioned how the current testing system – which has hastily combined capacity from multiple, diverse labs – could be effective.
‘What I would like to see most of all from Government is a statement that coming out of lockdown depends… on having a really effective system of tracing and testing, finding contacts, isolating and so on. That has to be the real focus of dealing with coronavirus.
‘At times one does despair that there is not a systematic strategy laid out as to how they are going to proceed,’ he said.
Prof. McConnell said an effective testing agency should, as a minimum, be capable of testing everyone entering Ireland as well as all contacts of daily positive cases, with results back in 24 hours.
Those tested should then be retested at least once, and possibly more, to ensure accuracy before they are allowed to leave quarantine.
‘You have to test them again before you can be really sure,’ he said. ‘You can’t let them off scotfree because of false negatives. You probably have to test two or three times.
‘What are they doing with people who test negative? They should be tested again, in my view, within two to three days,’ he said.
Mr McConnell said ‘an entirely new system’ – led by a new national testing agency – should be quickly created with a capacity to ‘seek and destroy’ the virus.
‘We’ve really got to search and destroy – close in and eliminate the virus.
‘Unless we do that all of these relaxations in the lockdown are going to make things much worse.’
The professor – a one time chairman of the Adelaide Hospital and the Irish Times Trust – envisages that a testing agency could be rapidly created and deployed to hunt down the virus in Ireland.
According to Mr McConnell, part of that process should be to channel Covid-19 emergency funds into a new national pandemic testing laboratory.
‘One of the things that has got to come out of this is a pandemic risk strategy. That must include a dedicated laboratory… ‘By the summer of 2021 we should have in place a pandemic risk laboratory,’ he said.
‘People will say such a laboratory might not be used in the absence a pandemic – well, we don’t use fire stations most of the time either.’ Prof. McConnell was critical of Government plans, saying they do not include enough emphasis on testing.
‘I looked at the Government’s exit strategy again this morning – and testing is there but just as another thing.
‘It’s aspirational. There are no numbers. There’s no mention of a search and ring-fence strategy. That’s what we need.’ He said the principle is nothing new but not one the current testing system can cope with yet.
‘In the old days that was impossible – a person would turn up with yellow fever – then you’d quarantine them. But now we can identify a person with coronavirus and quarantine them,’ he said.
To demonstrate the potential of this strategy, Mr McConnell suggested that geographical areas – and county GAA players – could be blanket tested.
He also suggested an effective testing agency could allow the GAA Championship to return.
‘I personally think we should be bringing back the championships. The way to do it is to test all the players on the panels and everybody they work with – exclude them for 14 days – retest and so on.
‘You get them back to training when they’re all tested negative and have the games played with no spectators for television. That would brighten the country.’
