The Health Service Executive has promised that in eight weeks’ time it will have 800 contact tracers recruited to deal with Covid-19.
There are currently 550 staff working in the HSE’s national contact tracing centres.
The HSE said that the current recruitment process will generate 1,000 staff in total.
The HSE said that “this process must happen incrementally to ensure supervision and support is provided to the newly trained recruits until they are fully operational”.