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Ireland’s travel “green list” will not be updated until the government’s medium-term plan to live with Covid-19 is released, said Tánaiste Leo Varadkar.
On Monday, Mr. Varadkar, with more details promised in the new roadmap to be published later this month.
“The green list will not be updated until then,” said the Minister of Business, launching on Monday the state’s € 2 billion credit guarantee scheme.
The list has not been updated in more than a month despite the government initially promising it would be done every two weeks. If the green list were updated based on the methodology used when it was first developed, many more countries would be eligible to travel without requiring a two-week quarantine period for those returning from those locations.
Membership of the list is determined by the 14-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants of Covid-19. Due to the growth of the virus in Ireland in recent weeks, many countries that were not originally included in the list would be eligible, including the United Kingdom, if the same calculation were used. However, last week Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said it would be “wicked” to update the green list on this basis.
Trips and tests
Mr Varadkar also noted that Ireland could opt for broader European plans for a “traffic light” system to determine travel locations, which was pointed out by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, last week, and in the one currently working on the European Disease Center. Control.
“That is something we can choose and that will be part of our considerations,” said the Tánaiste. The new roadmap is expected to contain updates on travel and testing policy, and officials will review options such as testing at airports or requiring those arriving in the country to obtain a negative test before traveling to the country.
Varadkar said of the new roadmap: “It will not be as straightforward as the existing roadmap, but it will give people the certainty and the horizon in which they can plan.”
However, the Opposition criticized the government’s travel policy, and the co-leader of the Social Democrats Róisín Shortall said that it is “impossible” to know what it is.
‘Reflecting on the media’
“We have not heard anything about what is really happening in our ports and airports since mid-July and at that stage the so-called monitoring was completely ineffective,” he said. “We have four different ministers, Coveney, Donnelly, Ryan and McEntee, pondering in the media what could be done. It has no coherence and part of it is contradictory, ”she said.
“We need a testing system that is reliable and gives the public confidence that the government is taking the problem seriously.”
Amid a general increase in the number of Covid-19 diagnoses in the state, Varadkar urged people not to focus too much on single-day numbers. “Most of the people who test positive are not even sick, they don’t have any symptoms. We need to look at other metrics as well, the positivity rate, the R number, the number of people in the hospital, the number of deaths, for example. ”
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