The Health Service Executive has said that contact tracing at meat plants is as high as 90%.
The HSE was responding to comments made by Minister for Health Simon Harris last night when he claimed that contact tracing in meat plants was running between 60% to 70%.
Dr Mai Mannix told a HSE news conference this morning that the 60% to 70% figure referred to "one particular instance".
The Chair of the National Outbreak Control Team said workplace contact tracing in meat plants was 100%.
She said "our aim is to contact everybody", but, she said communications issues have arisen in some cases where telephone numbers provided were wrong or contacts were reluctant to answer the phone.
If the contact tracing rate is at 90% in meat plants, it means that more than 100 people who are close contacts of confirmed cases, have not been contacted.
Asked today about concern in communities where there are confirmed cases in meat plants, the head of the HSE said "everyone needs to be vigilant" no matter where they are.
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The HSE provided the latest details on cases in the meat sector.
There have now been 1,054 cases of Covid-19 confirmed in meat plants.
Fifteen factories are under "active investigation"; 20 facilities have had outbreaks; 58% of patients are aged 25-44; 77.6% of them area male; seven have been treated in intensive care units but there have been no fatalities.
Head of the HSE Paul Reid referred to the policy whereby the Executive was sometimes informing employers before staff about confirmed cases of the virus.
He said that the HSE has been told by the Data Protection Commissioner that there was no breach of data as a result of the practise. Mr Reid said that there could be "exceptional circumstances" where the HSE needs to contact the employer first.
Standard operating procedures are now being developed on the issue. Lat month the HSE announced it was suspending the practise of informing employers first after RTÉ News revealed that in a number of cases employers were told about confirmed cases before the patients.
Yesterday, the Department of Health said a further five people who had previously been diagnosed with Covid-19 have died in Ireland.
It brings the overall death toll to 1,664.
The Department also said there was an additional 38 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, bringing the overall total number of cases here to 25,142.
Around 80% of cases of Covid-19 will be a mild to moderate illness, close to 14% have severe disease and around 6% are critical.
Generally, you need to be 15 minutes or more in the vicinity of an infected person and within two metres of them, to be considered at-risk, or a close contact.
