From Xmas to NephetMess
December 23, 2020
LOCKDOWNS are counter productive. Carriers are contained, numbers go down, restrictions eased, carriers released, numbers go up. YOYO destruction of the economy. We need to 
invest and implement track and trace to isolate the carriers locking down clusters only. Otherwise the economy goes under, numbers will never be contained. Investment in hospital beds, ICU, track and trace personnel with expertise similar to Iceland or Korea.
Along with failure to implement a proper track and trace system, there is failure to modernise our hospital system, miserable increase in the projected number of ICU hospital beds over the next few years. (1)
Little has changed since early October:
“At the Oireachtas Covid-19 committee yesterday, People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett raised the issue with HSE CEO Paul Reid.
“In 2009, the HSE said we needed 579 ICU beds. Could you please confirm the figures on this? We have about 280 at the moment. And that is down from the 354, we had in April,” he said.
Now, that to me is very, very alarming. So we are way short of a target set in 2009 before Covid. We are significantly down from the figures we had in April and let’s remind ourselves that in April, they were doing ICU in theatre recovery areas, the additional capacity we had was completely surge-based and unsustainable in the in the long-run. So how close are we to our ICU being overrun?”
Reid said the number of fully staffed ICU beds across the hospital system pre-March was 225. During the pandemic, with surge capacity, this was brought up to 354.”
Here is the latest data from the Covid geohive: (2)
Track and Trace has failed for many Principals of schools who’ve have found it almost impossible to obtain Track and Trace testing for their schools in spite of the occurrence of cases.
Of schools and childcare facilties, of 1209 tested, a massive YTD(year to date) of 324 have had positive cases. Even schools with large numbers of positive cases are open for business. Parents have been forced to take matters into their own hands and kept their children from school. a massive 25% of schools have had cases so far!
Of 5 million locator forms filled out by incoming visitors at airports, only a handful of forms have been used to Track and Trace. Regulatory variants of the above charts have been imposed over the past months but with our borders largely unchecked, dissemination from schools, hospitals, international visitors and a poor rate of Covid testing that has largely overwhelmed capacity and is certainly not nationwide, rate of Covid infecton is increasing by the day.
We do not have reliable statistics for visitors who’ve arrived over the past number of weeks as we neither have proper testing at airports or as required follow up testing say 7 days after arrival as is normal practice in other countries from Iceland to China. Unlike China we do not yet have Covid hotels obligatory for visitors to our shores to enable them self isolate for 10-14days under supervision from a lockdown group of fellow visitors.
In spite of economically damaging regulations including Level 5, numbers are continuing upward.
Some advisory regulations are so absurd as to erode public confidence and induce skepticism among the public. Examples are regulatory advisory for visitors to self isolate in their rooms for 14 days each with their own toilet facilities frequently opening the windows.. good luck with that one.
The limit of “From Friday 18 December, the Government is allowing three households to mix for social and family gatherings in homes, gardens and other outdoor settings.” I’m guessing we should write to Micheal Martin if we’ve difficulty deciding what family member we should not admit to the Xmas table if family exceeds 3 households.
Elderly people in hospitals continue to contract Covid and bring it to nursing homes. A report yesterday of one elderly nursing home resident following a hospital visit testing positive on their second test following return form a Dublin hospital.
To hide the very porous state of our defenses against Covid mostly in regard to lack of track and trace follow up, the blunt instrument of national lockdown is invoked to give the false impression Nephet and government are in control of the epidemic and dealing with it successfully: lack of cohesion on a full island basis shows a complete lack of political will at governmental level.
Over reliance on the EU has been another hallmark of the Nephet/FF/FG alliance.
“https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-recommends-first-covid-19-vaccine-authorisation-eu“
“Comirnaty is given as two injections into the arm, at least 21 days apart. The most common side effects with Comirnaty were usually mild or moderate and got better within a few days after vaccination. They included pain and swelling at the injection site, tiredness, headache, muscle and joint pain, chills and fever. The safety and effectiveness of the vaccine will continue to be monitored as it is used across the Member States, through the EU pharmacovigilance system and additional studies by the company and by European 
authorities.”
Some key facts are available here:
“Currently, because the virus is so novel, there is not enough knowledge on how long the immunity conferred by the vaccines will last after vaccination, or whether there will be a need for periodic booster doses.
Data from immunogenicity and efficacy studies in the long term will inform future vaccination strategies.
Vaccination policies are not decided by EMA but by public health agencies in EU member states. More information is available on the European Vaccination Information Portal. “
Given delays with the rollout of this vaccine never mind its delayed availability compared to the UK rollout. It would have made greater sense to seek to join with NI in having a joint UK rollout of their vaccine on this island. But demand for such a campaign has not been mooted.
Failure of implementation of a Track and Trace system similar to Icelandic or Korean model see earlier blog, does not bode well for the execution of a successful nationwide rollout of the vaccine. HSE experts in a recent report have highlighted the lack of preparedness especially re staffing “https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/hse-report-reveals-insufficient-resources-to-tackle-pandemic-as-staff-shortage-may-hit-roll-out-of-vaccine-39881668.html
Some are very skeptical a successful vaccine roll out can be accomplished.
Recent reports of large scale spreading in the UK of a mutant strain of the virus were followed by the imposition of a complete ban on travel from the UK for 48 hours. This led to a chaotic situation for travelers unclear as to whether they should rebook their flights to a post 48hrs period. The EU has now changed its mind and is against a complete ban on travel to and from the UK (4). A merry go round of changing goal posts and shifting sands increases public skepticism.
(5)”Retail Ireland director Arnold Dillon said the news that a widespread retail lockdown was under review was “a major shock”.
“The economic and social costs would be enormous, thousands of businesses and jobs would be at risk,” he said.
“This must be avoided. No evidence has been presented that retail settings are a significant cause of Covid transmission.”
The evidence points to schools, nursing homes, meat plants, hospitals, visitors to Ireland, open borders, lack of Track and Trace standards and lack of deep level response to local clustering outbreaks as opposed to over reliance on ruinous lockdowns with imprecise if devastating consequences. YoYo lockdowns are not the answer though they may be very costly bandaids hiding deeper issues.
Lack of a full rollout of testing on a countrywide basis to combat asymptomatic carrier outbreaks especially among the young, shows further evidence of lack of responsive preparedness on a scientific level.
Paying too great heed to the advice of Nephet and Micheal Martin given the lack of preparedness and success sofar would not be wise. Likewise too great a reliance on statistics without the successful implementation of a Track and Trace system to verify results is not recommended.
Whether Nephet and Micheal Martin drive us deeper into a Nephet mess remains to be seen. Clearly large sections of our communities are now effected. The cure may be worse than the disease. But in this instance instead of treating the disease, we may be just hiding it under the carpet.
Results will tell… Meanwhile, scepticism grows.
till again….
(2) https://covid-19.geohive.ie/
(3) https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/1127/1180966-virus-restrictions-christmas/
(4) https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/433440/eu-urges-countries-to-lift-uk-travel-bans
Brexit’s Massive Boost to the UK Economy
December 13, 2020
Sunday Independent today 13/12/2020 has an excellent thoroughly researched article by Gene Kerrigan describing the disproportionately huge salaries of both our politiicians and our judiciary compared to counterparts in much larger jurisdictions never mind compared to the absence of salary for ‘slave labor’ student nurses deployed in hospitals and nursing homes during our Covid epidemic.
The increasing wealth of the rich in our society compares to decreasing share of capital resources for lower tiers of employment in our society. They can no longer afford housing and increasing numbers find renting unaffordable and are forced to join the homeless numbers.
Through lack of action on the above matters politicians have shown their real agenda is to defend the rich and the status quo that goes along with it. No greater threat to the status quo at this time is Brexit.
Politicians and the media have fought bitterly against the threat to the status quo posed by Brexit.
In spite of the irrelevant letters by Micheal Martin to Boris Johnson pleading for compromise, it appears the UK is preparing for an Australian type FTA Free Trade Agreement. An Australian FTA is a type of deals where though you’ve free trade agreements with your partners locally, an FTA with the EU becomes the subject for endless rounds of negotiations that go on endlessly and randomly in an absurd Kafkaesque manner. The only rule being that you endlessly negotiate while setting deadlines that expire with the announcement that negotiations will continue. Australian FTA is basically No-Deal.
Meanwhile Delphic oracles of doom in the Irish media just as they did pre referendum in the UK, prophecy terrible precipice of doom faced by the UK economy on exit. On the contrary, A drop in the value of sterling will lead to a massive boost to the UK economy. Less imports, less travel, a boost to innovative import substitutions, a boost to UK’s indigenous manufacturing industry will stimulate R & D development for a breakout of the UK economy able to compete with some of the most technologically innovative Asian economies eg South Korea or Singapore. Democracy may breath again.
A report on Norway’s seafood industry https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1830914X states:
“The role of the seafood industry as an important food supplier in the future is unquestionable. As the world’s population grows, it grows older, richer and more people live in urban areas. Over the past 50 years, the world’s population, and the world economy, has doubled. It is expected that the middle class in emerging economies will triple by 2050 [14]. The United Nations Food Organization (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) point to the importance of the ocean to solve many of our future global challenges [19]. OECD states that economic activity in the ocean space is growing strongly and estimates that the ocean economy will provide 40 million jobs and double its contribution to global value creation by 2030 [19].”
The UK’s extensive coastline should offset any trade losses due to unfair imposition of punitive tariffs by the EU.
The likelihood is that the UK will eventually do a deal on Free Trade FTA with the EU similar to the deal done by Singapore in 2014. This should not happen before the UK can show it can stand independently on its own 2 feet free from the Orwellian constraints 4 feet of the EU will impose. The UK will require to put much work into its new found independence before results eventually come.
Free from the economic vision of the EU that has stifled development in countries across the region such as Spain, Portugal and Italy and Greece, the UK can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the EU. The effects of Covid on Spain are calculated to lead to a drop of 12% in its GDP. Italy’s membership of the EU has turned its economy into a basket case its innovative days of accelerating growth now a distant memory. The UK can move quickly to quickly dismantle aspects of its economy that prevent investment in NOGO areas such as infrastructure and housing areas that countries such as Ireland because of ‘Fiscal Rules’ can do nothing about.
Therefore we have the EU led absurd reliance on stimulating the private sector to provide housing and health services with more power demanded for its insatiable quest for more Orwellian Big Brother regulatory powers including powers for the setting up of a European army.
“Italy is a large manufacturer (overall the second in EU behind Germany)[28] and exporter[29] of a significant variety of products including machinery, vehicles, pharmaceuticals, furniture, food, clothing, and robots.[30] Italy has therefore a significant trade surplus. The country is also well known for its influential and innovative business economic sector, an industrious and competitive agricultural sector (Italy is the world’s largest wine producer),[31] and manufacturers of creatively designed, high-quality products including automobiles, ships, home appliances, and designer clothing. Italy is the largest hub for luxury goods in Europe and the third luxury hub globally.[32][33]
Despite these important achievements, the country’s economy today suffers from structural and non-structural problems. Annual growth rates have often been below the EU average with Italy being hit particularly hard by the late-2000s recession. Massive government spending from the 1980s onwards has produced a severe rise in public debt. In addition, Italian living standards have a considerable North–South divide: the average GDP per capita in Northern and Central Italy significantly exceeds the EU average, while some regions and provinces in Southern Italy are dramatically below.[34] In recent years, Italy’s GDP per capita growth slowly caught-up with the Eurozone average[35] while its employment rate still lags behind; however, economists dispute the official figures because of the large number of informal jobs (estimated between 10% and 20% of the labour force) that lift the inactivity or unemployment rates.[36]”
List of countries by total wealth – Wikipedia
Italy ranks high on the list of countries by total wealth coming in at number 8, compared to Spain 10, Ireland being 34 just ahead of United Arab Emirates at 35. The growth of private wealth since the global currency crisis of 2008 has been a significant factor in the support for the maintenance of the hegemony of global currency leaders such as The Fed, ECB and the EU. Falling GDP is offset by the irony of growing private wealth and a growing gulf between rich and poor in countries as diverse as Ireland, Spain and Italy. Ireland’s GDP less so as this is mitigated by the dominant presence of MNCs.
Overall, in spite of the so-called recovery of markets in the US such as NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange, the rebound from the crash of 2008 across the world especially in Europe has been marginal. Italy’s banks are in a continual state of crisis The banks of Italy face another crisis | Notayesmanseconomics’s Blog (wordpress.com)
The UK’s departure from the ominous future of the EU under the aegis of the EU’s corporate watch dogs is a gratifying and reassuring sign that democracy still exists in our increasingly absurd world of media brainwashing and pandemic.
till again
Controlling the Judiciary!
December 3, 2020
The 24bn extra borrowing required that will raise our debt to GDP borrowing from 95% to 115% in the space of one year raises a number of questions leaving aside the cost of rollout of the vaccine (which hasn’t been announced yet nor much publicity given to the indemnity being given to the companies rolling out the vaccine). I’m sure the cost is regarded as a trivial sum compared to the potentially successful herd immunity this will bring allowing our economy to return to pre-coronavirus levels.
Let’s hope the short testing window consequence will be no lasting side effects or efficacy of the vaccine.
We should wonder why even a fraction of this amount was not borrowed before now to cauterise the open wound caused by our neglect of affordability of properly building sufficient homes for our needs. Instead, the neglect of our property market continues; proliferation of buy to let properties financed by vulture funds, shortages in supply leading to auctions with unheard of prices being reached that will later come back to haunt purchasers; local councils pumping the property market paying over the top market prices to private developers instead of building at cost and selling at cost using their own workers to build expertise and standards.
An Taoiseach Micheal Martin would appear to have taken over the job of the CMO Tony Holohan as he appears to do nothing else than provide updates on what the coronavirus regulatory level we are on irrespective of its cost to the economy and the state.
We never needed the absurd level of Level 5 with the low mortality rates and the increasingly effective Level 3 restrictions. We still lack information in the media on the makeup of mortality rate stats typically only stating ‘3 deaths due to coronavirus today’. Where these are, who these are, age groups etc are blindly withheld from RTE.
Meanwhile Martin spends his time stoking up arcane arguments sniping at Sinn Fein over historical records the rest of us have moved on from.
Micheal Martin’s considerable ineffectiveness in managing economic issues related to our economy continues unabated notwithstanding his concentration on coronavirus. Last year 21,000 homes were built when we needed at least double that number. This year the estimated build is down to 16,000 a drop of nearly 25%.
It would appear his main brief is to do nothing. We should never have entered the EU. So far we’ve had the financial crisis, broken housing market and Brexit beckons. Of course the EU is jobs for the boys and gals:-)
The schemes setup to help the first time buyer eg ‘Help to Buy Scheme’ are not helping first time buyers to the extent that they stimulate increasing house property pricing profit largely pocketed by developers. Little financial support dealing with Coronavirus costs to the economy has been negotiated at ECB level with borrowing saddled on the shoulders of Irish taxpayers.
Negotiating a deal with the banks has been ignored in favour of allowing banks to deal with mortgage arrears on a case by case basis often leading to an excruciating outcome for those in negative equity behind on their payments. This in spite of a European directive to banks to favour homeowners in such negotiations; this is a preemptive strike in the EU in the face of the possible destruction of up to 50% of businesses in the retail sector and across the economy due to the coronavirus damage to the economy. Let’s put aside the question of failing banks and future bailouts for the moment…
But not before we accept a few home truths regarding our banks. Firstly, there is the need to tackle fake news in the media that argues eg “There Is No Magic Bullet To Tackle for Housing Supply”(1) O’Sullivan argues we’ve a skills shortage and we cant magically create an army of builders overnight to tackle under supply. He makes the point:
“In 2015, the Central Bank of Ireland introduced macro-prudential measures, placing loan-to-income and loan-to-value ceilings over the majority of new mortgage lending. These rules have a particularly sharp effect in Dublin, where asking prices are 47pc higher than the national average, while disposable incomes stand 18pc above the mean for the State. It is not a surprise, therefore, that annual Dublin price inflation has slowed to 1.4pc, while prices in the rest of Ireland shows an increase of 7.5pc in the latest CSO data. We also suspect that the Central Bank rules are ‘exporting’ inflation away from some urban areas into their commuter belts.”
The above erroneously gives the impression the Central Bank rules have solved our problems. Instead, the above rules have merely cemented in place unaffordable levels as the norm doing little to reduce price increase and even less to reduce unaffordability.
He states regarding rent to buy and vulture funds: “Moreover, these funds are actively funding the delivery of new units into a rental market that is starved of supply, helping to address the shortages of accommodation.”
However absurd his argument in favour of the looting of the Irish property sector and Vulture/Cuckoo Fund voracious moves into the Irish construction sector some of the arguments against same in this blog, I agree with his following view:
“Irish builders were left chronically under-capitalised by the crash of a decade ago and high street banks are still reluctant to lend. Central Bank data shows that the stock of domestic bank credit for residential development and investment has fallen 91pc since 2010.”
The Magic Bullet so-called is simply to use borrowings we’ve mustered to deal with coronavirus, to massively borrow to build the infrastructure we need. Workers will be drawn to the magnet. Investment to this purpose will offset by way of stimulus any losses the banks make due to so-called negative equity losses following a fall in house prices. For once the needs of the Irish people will be put to the vanguard and we will no longer behave as EU or Martin serfs of the absurd.
Irish banks are under-funding development in the Irish property sector I believe under direct instruction from the invisible hand of the European Central Bank. The Irish commercial property sector is disgracefully over-funded resulting in efforts misappropriated into the commercial office building sector instead of into the home ownership sector. Currently, homes are too costly to build and taxation too onerous to meet affordability criteria; along with the failure of planning laws to evolve to cope with the needs of the construction sector. government has been remiss in regard to (1) Taxation (2) Planning (3) Banking
No (3) is a particular NOGO area for the Irish media, a sacred cow about which no one whispers! The fact is our membership of the European Union is throttling development of our property sector. We are constrained under the rules of Fiscal Space (btw many other eu countries ignore such rules) to provide the state finance to kick start the development investment required to build the 30-50k housing stock. So sheepishly government have taken a hands off approach putting the matter into the hands of the private sector. We are in a similar situation regarding water infrastructure with previous government efforts to hive off Irish Water charges to private investment.
Our membership of the EU precludes investment in Water infrastructure and home building as such investment is perceived as a threat to the stability of our banks. House prices go down, negative equity begins, money floods out of the banks and liabilities increase risk of further contagion from negative equity. Housing costs must remain high; membership of the EU is a bonus to the wealthy involving the wealth transfer we see occurring in Ireland from the poor to the wealthy. Pretty soon there will be no in betweens.
Micheal Martin is a fully paid up serf of the EU and he will not constrain the banks but he’ll do what he’s told. Meanwhile Brexit looms, 50% of our businesses are at risk, our fishing industry faces collapse, our banks are letting employees go by the thousands, foreign UK and Irish owned retail sector is being devastated. Perhaps Micheal Martin knows that lots can be hidden behind a coronavirus mask!
Philip O’Sullivan: ‘Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet for housing supply’ – Independent.ie
Martin’s main policy for homeowners is to take ownership away from them and put this in the hands of vulture funds and unscrupulous developers intent on creating marginalised slums of the future where renters will come and go leading deteriorating housing stock in their wake.
Nearly a third of new builds bypassing emergency planning laws overlooking quality, safety and value for money guaranteeing lasting unaffordability within the nation’s housing stock are planned.
Can you believe the absurdity of funding local councils to purchase housing from the private sector to provide social housing for citizens?
The property sector for buyers remains in a total mess. Planning overhaul to provide for the needs of this sector has been ignored. Its estimated cost of renovating apartments in Dublin at one location will be in excess of 15000 per apartment overall one billion euros. Political interests stoke the pockets of the rich and ensure landlords fill their pockets many of whom are landlords. The banks wish for the shortages to continue to ensure negative equity will not come to haunt them and property prices remain high.
Part 11
According to The Sunday Times, p1, Nov 29, 2020, “A solicitor nominated by the government to become a Circuit Court Judge, on the same day that Seamus Woulfe was chosen for the Supreme Court, had canvassed for a Fine Gael councillor in the local elections last year”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9amus_Woulfe “He became Attorney General in June 2017 to the Fine Gael minority government. During his tenure he advised on the referendum to replace the Eighth Amendment, the constitutionality of the Occupied Territories Bill and legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was succeeded by Paul Gallagher in June 2020 on the formation of a new government.
Woulfe was appointed a Supreme Court judge in July 2020. In August 2020, he attended a dinner of the Oireachtas Golf Society in the midst of COVID-19 restrictions which led to the Supreme Court asking former Chief Justice Susan Denham to produce a report on his attendance. Following the publication of the report and ensuing public controversy, the Chief Justice Frank Clarke wrote to Woulfe in November 2020. He said that in his view Woulfe should resign and that all members of the Supreme Court believed he had caused “significant and irreparable” damage to the Supreme Court.”
Woulfe has done very well out of his Fine Gael affiliations firstly being appointed Attorney General and without ever having been a judge!”
Helen McEntee disingenuously selected Seamus Woulfe to the post of Supreme Court Judge ignoring other interested and qualified applicants. The process was not to select the Supreme Court Judge but rather to vet candidates as to their qualifications for the post. Each candidate would have qualified for selection but in an unprecedented move, she chose Woulfe over the other candidates putting forward his name only to cabinet.
“This week, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling party Fidesz rammed a law through parliament that poses a new threat to the independence of the country’s judiciary.
The law creates a separate administrative court system that will handle cases directly affecting basic human rights, such as elections, right to asylum, right to assembly, and complaints of police violence.
Administrative court systems may be familiar to people in France, Sweden, Germany, and elsewhere. The problem in Hungary is that the courts will be at risk of significant political interference by the executive.
The minister of justice has wide-ranging powers under the new law. The minister will get to pick judges and court presidents and decide on promotions and court budgets without any effective judicial oversight, allowing the post enormous potential to control the workings of judges and the courts. The fact that a politician, who is part of the executive branch, will select all judges in a court system responsible for holding the administration and the executive to account makes a mockery of the separation of powers and rule of law.
The government rushed the law through parliament without waiting for the opinion of the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body, on the law expected in January 2019. President Janos Ader, whose signature is needed for the law to enter into force, should send the bill back to parliament until the Venice Commission issues its opinion.
This is the latest in a series of assaults on the judiciary and rule of law in Hungary. In its eight years in power, the Orban government has packed the Constitutional Court with its preferred justices and forced 400 judges into retirement. The president of the National Judicial Office, responsible for the administration of the courts and overseeing judicial appointments, is Orban’s close friend’s wife.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/12/14/hungarys-latest-assault-judiciary
Clearly assaults on the judiciary in Ireland are acted out with greater stealth in Ireland. But the Woulfe saga added to his inappropriate attendance at the Oireachtas Golf Society Dinner to mix with the political and financial elites of our country, draw down blatant disregard by McEntee, Woulfe, the present cabinet of FF, FG and The Greens, for the protection of the rights of an independent judiciary as a pillar of democracy.
Meanwhile Covid Rules with Level 3 lockdown as we await the approach of The Brexit Dragon.
Perhaps we can learn from the experience of Iceland given our track and trace system has largely failed.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03284-3?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB
“deCODE genetics, a human-genomics company in Reykjavik. He became convinced that making sense of the epidemic, and protecting the people of Iceland from it, would require a sweeping scientific response.
When Stefánsson arrived at work, he phoned the leadership of Amgen, the US pharmaceutical company that owns deCODE, and asked whether he could offer deCODE’s resources to track the spread of the virus, which had landed on Icelandic shores only six days earlier. “The response I got from them was, ‘For heaven’s sake, do that,’” says Stefánsson.”
” Iceland’s science has been credited with preventing deaths — the country reports fewer than 7 per 100,000 people, compared with around 80 per 100,000 in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has also managed to prevent outbreaks while keeping its borders open, welcoming tourists from 45 countries since mid-June. The partnership again kicked into high gear in September, when a second large wave of infections threatened the nation.”
“deCODE’s main activity has been COVID-19 screening, including open invitations to the general population. Today, any resident with even the mildest symptom can sign up to be tested. Residents sign up online using dedicated COVID software built by deCODE programmers. At a testing centre, they show a barcode from their phone to automatically print a label for a swab sample. Once taken, the sample is sent to a laboratory at deCODE’s headquarters that is run jointly by the university hospital and deCODE and operates from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Results are always available within 24 hours, but are often ready in just 4 to 6. “We now have the capacity for about 5,000 samples per day,” says Kristinsson. As a whole, the collaborators have so far screened 55% of the country’s population.
If the test is negative, the person receives an all-clear text. If the test is positive, it triggers two chains of action: one at the hospital and one at the lab.
At the hospital, the individual is registered in a centralized database and enrolled in a tele-health monitoring service at a COVID outpatient clinic for a 14-day isolation period. They will receive frequent phone calls from a nurse or physician who documents their medical and social history, and runs through a standardized checklist of 19 symptoms. All the data are logged in a national electronic medical record system. A team of clinician-scientists at the hospital created the collection system in mid-March with science in mind. “We decided to document clinical findings in a structured way that would be useful for research purposes,” says Palsson.”
till again…..
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