The HSE is to enhance its covid-19 testing for residents and staff at private nursing homes.
It will also implement a CRM tracker to capture their most up to date data and report that back to the National Public Health Emergency Team in future.
There are now 196 outbreaks of coronavirus at nursing homes across the country.
Anne O'Connor, Chief Operations Officer with the HSE, says they will now begin testing all staff and residents in nursing homes where there is a confirmed case of covid-19:
"That is something that is a clear requirement in terms of our capacity to track this and provide the most accurate data, in terms of informing this pandemic."
Ms O'Connor said that up until now they have had the National Ambulance Service deployed to do mobile testing at nursing homes on the basis of a suspicious case.
That will continue, but the HSE COO says they are now "scaling up to be able to test all residents and staff in nursing homes where there are confirmed outbreaks".
The announcement comes after it was revealed that a Dublin nursing home has had eleven Covid-19 related deaths within the last two weeks.
