People urged to continue to avail of pop-up Covid test centre in Nenagh

The Covid-19 testing centre at Tyone, Nenagh. Photo: Tipp FM.

A Mid-West public health specialist has praised the Nenagh community for doing their part in attempting to limit a Covid-19 outbreak.

Dr Marie Casey is pleased with the uptake of testing at the pop-up centre at Tyone since last Tuesday, but is encouraging people to continue using the service.

The drive-thru and walk-in service will remain open until next Monday, with 1,250 people already availing of testing there in the week until Monday night.

Dr Casey says they’re trying to find as many asymptomatic cases as possible to limit the spread of the virus.

“The new variant is more infectious so we see more intense clustering than we used to see last year. So when a case gets into a setting of any type there’re more likely to be spread within that setting.”

“The kind of things we might have been able to get away with last year we cannot do this year.”

“Just to give you a general perspective on that, last year our close contact test positive rate was about 10% and this year it’s nearer to 30%.”