Cervical cancer screening will resume in the second week of July.

The HSE this afternoon confirmed that the first CervicalCheck appointment letters will be sent out on July 6th.

Women who have been identified as a priority will be offered the first appointments.

Meanwhile, BreastCheck and BowelScreen will not be back up and running until September.

Thousands of patients have missed out on screening since services were paused in March.

HSE Chief Clinical Officer Dr Colm Henry said the CervicalCheck backlog is unlikely to be cleared before October.

“As with any programme or any service we are resuming, this is based on assumptions,” he said.

“The assumptions being that we stay at low levels of community transmission and it is also dependent on the flow-through of screening services.

“So, we expect it will take certainly of the order of several months to get through those cases that were suspended form March 27th onwards.”

Earlier this month, Health Minister Simon Harris said CervicalCheck and the Diabetic RetinaScreen would be the first of the four main screening services to reopen.

He said they would be followed by BreastCheck and then BowelScreen.