A surge in cases will likely be seen over the next ten days as the Delta variant continues to spread rapidly in Ireland amid the return of schools across the country.
It was reported last week that up to 12,000 students were at home isolating after being identified as close contacts within their class, and now officials are calling for changes to be made.
Speaking to Claire Byrne this morning, Dr Colm Henry, CCO of the HSE said: "While Covid cases are still too high, the link between cases and harm is certainly falling and so a change in the way we deal with close contacts is likely."
He said a "different scenario" may "open up choices" as the HSE looks to review the current isolation rules for school children.
The proposal would see testing of under-13s and vaccinated people potentially be scaled back to avoid thousands of students missing out on class time.
However, Dr. Henry said the option for children to stay in school if they are asymptomatic will only come if positivity rates among pupils decline.
He explained that the policy of "chasing down cases" will have to remain as long as there are still high levels of cases being reported every day.
He added: "We just need to see the assurance in these first few weeks and return to school that we don't see a huge surge in cases of Delta among schoolchildren and we don't see multiple outbreaks and the signs are positive so far."
Michael Gillespie, general-secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, says that the next week or so will reveal how quickly the Delta variant is spreading.
He told Newstalk Breakfast: "Anybody could have seen that surge coming, but what we're waiting for now over the next two weeks is the results of those tests."
He said that changes are needed but that they should be “based on sound public health advice - and not because of any deficits in contact tracing - but we need to wait for a while longer.
"We closed schools last May, June when there was a different variant predominant, we had smaller numbers.
"Now we're going back with larger numbers and the Delta variant is the dominant variant.
"We hope that low numbers will be turned into positive cases, but we need the figures to support that."
