Lifesaving screening programme CervicalCheck was back up and running today - but up to 80,000 will be waiting until October for BreastCheck to resume.
Up to 100,000 women have been left waiting for their cervical smear tests after the CervicalCheck screening programme was paused in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
But as of today, the screening programme was back up and running. Two priority groups will be seen first, including women who require annual checks and those who are entering the programme for the first time.
Dr Colm Henry, Chief Clinical Officer at the HSE, said he is confident the backlog created by the pause in services will be cleared by October.
But services will be slower and this will create further delays - which means CervicalCheck will not be up and running as it used to until February or March 2021, a full year after it was forced to halt services.
CervicalCheck will now use HPV screening, which is more effective than the previous cytology method used.
But up to 80,000 women whose BreastCheck tests were rescheduled during the pandemic will have to wait for September or October before that programme resumes services.
The backlog will not be clear until early 2021, said Dr Henry.
It remains unclear when Bowel Screening and Diabetic Retina Scan screening programmes will be able to resume.
Dr Henry told RTE Radio One’s Today With Sarah McInerney: “Each of our four screening programmes are different. Bowel screening takes place in your own home, cervical screening takes place in primary care.
“The tests in breast screening takes place in a congregated healthcare setting - exactly the kind of setting where an outbreak of Covid-19 has the greatest hazard.”
Dr Henry said he is concerned about the delays in getting the programmes back up and running, but added: “But I am equally if not more concerned about recreating conditions that could lead to an outbreak of Covid in a healthcare environment.
“So in opening any service, we need to protect people, make women feel safe when they come into a screening environment, and make sure we don’t allow conditions to foster that would allow Covid outbreaks unwittingly within a healthcare setting.”
