Sir, – I had the pleasure of spending New Year’s Day going on a family outing to Covid testing centres. In the midnight rush to book an appointment, myself, my husband and my son all got an appointment in one centre, while my daughter got an appointment in another centre earlier on the same day. Her appointment was in a drive-through testing centre. It took four minutes from start to finish, it was all outdoors and we only spoke to three staff members. This was in complete contrast to the testing centre I attended with my husband and son. Here the queue went out of the building and continued for over 200 metres outside. Once you finally made it inside, the queue snaked three times. This meant you spent a significant amount of time inside in close contact to many potentially contagious people.
Having experienced two testing centres in the same day, it was evident that the latter was a much more inefficient and less safe approach to testing. – Yours, etc,
EITHNE LAIRD,
Skerries,
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Co Dublin.