The HSE has said that up to 1,000 people each day are not turning up for Covid tests.
CEO Paul Reid said that almost 25% ot those people scheduled for testing are not showing up.
He said labs processed almost 62,000 tests across 46 labs last week with the average positivity rate at 1.3%.
He added the median turnaround time is 2.2 days from test referral to completion of contact tracing.
The HSE is to start recruiting more community ‘swabbers’ for Covid-19 through an online application process from Monday.
Several hundred people are being sought for the roles, which will include part-time work and will be available over seven days.
The HSE said the new appointments will allow redeployed clinical staff to return to their previous work.
At a briefing this morning, Mr Reid called on people to give their correct details as a wrong phone number can mean they cannot get information out to people for results or for contact tracing.
He said if someone does not get their results within three days they should contact their GP to find out what the issue is and to get their result.
Mr Reid said new cases of Covid-19 have trended upwards over the past four weeks and the average number of new cases per day is 120.
He said 1,514 cases have been reported over the past 14 days, compared with 1,096 in the previous 14 days, but that the number of patients with Covid-19 in hospital and in intensive care units is reasonably stable overall.