A special antigen staff testing programme has been rolled out in some nursing homes in County Roscommon.
The HSE has confirmed that the four week pilot will to look test the operational feasibility of antigen testing in the healthcare sector.
Staff are asked to come to work 15 minutes earlier in order to perform the tests with 3500 results returned so far - and just two positive cases - and no outbreaks of Covid have been recorded at any facility that is invovled in the pilot.
Niamh O'Beirne, head of testing and tracing with the HSE, explains more about why the HSE is trialling this system :