Cabinet committee agrees to quarantine for some arrivals

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The Cabinet is ready to introduce a limited form of mandatory quarantine, as part of a series of new travel restrictions aimed at reducing the transmission of Covid-19.

A cabinet subcommittee tonight agreed to a mandatory 14-day quarantine for any incoming passenger arriving in Ireland without a negative PCR test result.

People from South Africa and Brazil also face a similar quarantine due to the rise of Covid-19 variants in their countries.

In addition, gardaí will increase its controls at both ports and airports, and will fine people who take non-essential trips such as vacations.

They will ask outgoing passengers if their trip is absolutely necessary and will also assess whether the returning passengers had an essential reason for traveling.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live tonight, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said: “We are making a change in travel policy due to the new variants.

Leo Varadkar

“We have already reduced travel by about 95% and introduced the PCR requirement. Now, to be presented to Cabinet tomorrow, there is a travel ban on arrivals from Brazil and South Africa with a mandatory hotel quarantine for them and for anyone who does not have a negative PCR test.

“This will take a few weeks to be operational.”

Varadkar said there would also be another travel change in the Cabinet: “For people coming from other countries, we are going to make quarantine at home mandatory; for the moment it is not, it is a recommendation.”

When Claire Byrne told him that a survey of 1,000 viewers of his show suggested 91% of people were in favor of mandatory quarantine, he said this was “not surprising.”

Mr Varadkar added: “We do not dictate a mandatory quarantine for everyone entering the country, but there are three things that people should know and understand about it.

“It would not be completely effective for us to do so because of the border.

“Also, if we did, it would probably be for a year, as a dramatic public health measure like that would be difficult to reverse and we probably wouldn’t reverse it until everyone is vaccinated.”

“So people who wanted to go abroad this summer or see relatives next Christmas would probably not be on the agenda.”

“Third, they are detention centers, actually. Only 500 or 600 people can be left in a day, so there may be some trips that we now consider essential, such as going to London for an interview or seeing a dying relative , are not possible. ” . “

He said: “International travel is not a miracle solution, 40,000 people have brought Covid here in the last two weeks and very few of them are travel related.”

Mr Varadkar also said that the government “will reopen – and want to – reopen schools in stages in February and March.”

When asked about Northern Ireland, he said: “I am against closing the border entirely. What I would like to see is an all-island approach, if that’s not possible then a two-island approach.”

Speaking about the Covid-19 restrictions, Mr. Varadkar said: “Hospitals are in a very difficult position, so the advice to Cabinet is that we should extend the shutdown until March 5, this will align us with Ireland from the North”.

“Any loosening of restrictions will have to be very, very slow – maybe it starts with some retail, maybe with the possibility of meeting two people outside.

“But if we can get the numbers very low, that becomes a possibility and if we get a critical mass of people vaccinated, we may be able to ease some restrictions during the Easter period,” said Mr Varadkar.

He said: “The advice from Medical Director and Professor Philip Nolan is that ‘Zero Covid’ is unrealistic for Ireland.

“‘Zero Covid’ means having 14 days in a row without a single case and this could mean that Ireland is in permanent lockdown.”

On the vaccination program, he said: “We are having a big battle in the EU with AstraZeneca for supplies, but we will still have 1.1 million doses by the end of March so that we can start community vaccinations in mid-February.”

“If we can suppress the virus to very low levels by early March and get a critical mass of people vaccinated, we can ease the restrictions on the type of Easter / Summer period, but it will be very slow.”

Earlier, Labor Party leader Alan Kelly described the mandatory quarantine measures as “half-hearted.”

He said former Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Bertie Ahern stationed 1,000 soldiers and Gardaí on the border during the foot-and-mouth disease debacle.

Kelly asked, “Why are animal diseases taken more seriously than Covid-19?”

The co-leader of the Social Democrats Róisín Shortall said that they were more “half-baked proposals” from the government that “would not work.”

She said: “NPHET was clear in its letter published last Thursday that the discretion on a second PCR test and the movement restriction must be removed, meaning two tests and a supervised quarantine are needed.”

Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane said mandatory quarantine is now required for all travelers.

In a tweet, he said: “Extending the lockdown until March is only part of the solution. It should be part of a maximum suppression strategy. Test, trace, isolate and vaccinate – mandatory testing and quarantine on all trips and actions throughout the island. We never got the correct test and trace controls or travel controls. We already did! “

Earlier today, Transport Minister Eamon Ryan said the government will take a “tougher, stricter and more cautious” approach to travel due to the emergence of new variants of Covid-19.

However, Ryan cautioned that there is no silver bullet to solve the problem and that a multi-tiered approach is needed, while allowing essential and emergency travel.

Among the measures being considered, he said, is stopping the issuance of short-term visas, tougher sanctions on the 5 km travel limit (to prevent people from traveling to airports for unnecessary flights) and strengthening the monitoring of the passenger location forms.

Ryan said he is working on an approach with his UK colleague to close the gaps in defense and that if an agreement can be reached across the islands, then “the door will close like that.”

He said the government will have to work closely with the UK government and its European colleagues, adding that it is not just that “a simple ban will solve this, and it all goes away.”

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Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s special envoy for Covid-19 said that all countries must make decisions on how best to minimize risks as the virus spreads globally.

Dr David Nabarro said that Ireland has had an 18% reduction in Covid-19 incidence rates over the past two weeks, but this will become more difficult if “many people with Covid enter the country.”

Speaking about the same program, he said that new information on risk will always mean there is some “change” [of measures] from time to time, but WHO prefers countries to “figure it out themselves”.

Borders are part of it, he said, but ensuring best practices for dealing with new cases when they arise is also part of preventive measures.

Also today, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said mandatory quarantine should be introduced for all travelers on the island of Ireland to ensure that no one travels here except for essential reasons.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, McDonald said the government needs to use its influence to ensure that the same “strict” measures are implemented on both sides of the border, and that anything other than that would be insufficient.

He said the Republic and Northern Ireland should be viewed as a single unit when it comes to containing the virus.

“Any idea that you can corral the virus in one corner of the island and keep others safe is sadly misinformed. A reservoir of the virus anywhere on the island puts us all in danger,” he said.

He said the measures are “absolutely proportionate” and he does not believe they are considered draconian.

The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Westminster said the Stormont Executive is simply not in a position to ban essential travel from the UK, although non-essential travel (even within Northern Ireland) is not recommended.

Jeffrey Donaldson said it is “not sustainable” to completely stop flights or ferries from Britain to Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, according to new data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, more than 66% of the population remained local, less than 10 km from their home, in the week ending January 15.

Its ‘Local Stay Indicator’ rose each day from an annual low on Christmas Eve (51.7%) to 68.6% through January 7, before seeming to stabilize around January 15 at 66, 2%.

Dublin remains the county with the highest percentage of population remaining local (78.8%) for the week ending January 15th.

The CSO says this reflects its urbanized nature relative to other counties.

With the exception of May, which showed no weekly changes, all counties experienced modest reductions in the ‘Local Indicator of Permanence’ from the week ending January 8 through the week ending January 15, indicating some relaxation of the mobility behavior.

Additional information David Murphy, Fergal Bowers



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