Nineteen residents and staff in Co Kerry nursing home test positive for Covid-19

Nineteen residents and staff in a Co Kerry nursing home have tested positive for coronavirus in the latest outbreak to affect the sector.

The manager of the home is among the staff diagnosed with the virus, according to Minister of State for Older People Mary Butler.

Providing sufficient agency nursing staff to work in homes affected by outbreaks was a "really difficult issue", she told the Oireachtas Health Committee on Wednesday.

While the nursing home was not identified at the committee, it has been named locally as privately run Oaklands Nursing Home in Listowel, which can cater for 51 residents.

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When contacted on Wednesday it said there was nobody available to talk to the media.

HSE support teams and staff from the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) were on site at the Kerry nursing home, Ms Butler said, and were working on a plan to control the outbreak.

Difficulties

She said she planned to discuss with the HSE the difficulties in accessing agency staff for nursing homes, particularly in rural areas, later this week.

A Hiqa inspection carried out last May found the home was “overly reliant” on one person and sufficient contingency arrangements had not been put in place to ensure the centre could continue to operate safely if that person became ill. It found the registered provider, Bolden (Nursing) Ltd, had not ensured there was a robust management structure in the centre.

Inspectors deemed the governance and management arrangements at the time “an urgent risk to the delivery of a safe, appropriate, consistent and effectively monitored service”.

Following the inspection the owners took immediate steps to engage “a highly qualified and experienced professional” to replace a director who had resigned to run operations, according to the inspection report.

There are currently outbreaks in 51 nursing homes, according to the most recent HSE figures.

Asked meanwhile at the committee about plans to create three elective hospitals in Dublin, Cork and Galway, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said a preliminary business case for the three facilities would be ready before the end of the year.

He said the public health workforce would be doubled from 250 to 500, and work was currently ongoing in relation to the configuration of this increase between doctors, nurses and other grades of staff.

Rapid antigen testing for the virus could be a “game-changer” but first information is needed on which of these tests is the best to use, the Minister said.

The cost of a rapid test is about €10, compared to €200 for the standard PCR test, he pointed out, and rapid testing can be done on site rather than in a lab.

Mr Donnelly said half of the 600,000 flu vaccine doses for children have been distributed and the rest would be shortly. Among adults, supplies for 950,000 have been distributed and the remaining 400,000 doses have arrived in the country and will be distributed.