HSE planning to use antigen tests to deal with Covid outbreaks Sunday, July 11, 2021 By Jonathan McCambridge, PA The Health Service Executive (HSE) is planning to utilise antigen testing for Covid outbreaks and for close contacts, its chief executive has said. Paul Reid said the hospital system in Ireland is currently very busy due to the backlog caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Reid told RTE’s This Week programme: “What none of us want to go back to is those dark days in January when we had over 2,000 people being treated with Covid in hospital, and certainly the modelling from Nphet (National Public Health Emergency Team) presents huge issues for us in terms of hospitalisations.