Training has started today for staff at community assessment hubs around the country.
They should be up and running from the middle of this week offering testing for Covid 19 referrals.
The hubs will be located in the country’s primary care centres and will be open 7 days a week, but patients will have to be referred by their GP.
Dr Tadhg Crowley of Ayrfield Medical Practice in Kilkenny outlines the idea behind the initiative.
He said “Basically they would be manned by GP’s from the practices who will go out of their day duty and go up and contribute to these”.
“The idea is to try and keep general practice free for dealing with the other complaints, because it’s a real worry nationally that they’ve seen that people are no longer going to hospitals and reducing calls to general practice in terms of the other illnesses”.
