Dr. Tony Holohan speaking to the Dáil Committee on Covid-19. Oireachtas TV screenshot via RollingNews.ie.
By Irish Echo Staff
Travelers arriving in Ireland will continue to go into a 14 day quarantine for the time being.
The republic's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, said he could not give a commitment on when the 14-day quarantining requirement would be lifted on passengers arriving at Irish ports and airports.
He told the Dáil Committee on Covid-19 that the public health advice was to “try and ensure that we limit travel from overseas”.
Dr. Holohan, according to an Irish Times report, was responding to Fine Gael TD Colm Brophy who said that as long as the quarantine advice remained in place “Ireland is in effective lockdown, which has huge implications for the commercial life of the leisure industry."
Mr. Brophy said it seemed contradictory to a lot of people that there was an open border with Northern Ireland “but you have people landing in Dublin airport with an effective 14-day lockdown, which will literally kill our tourism industry”.
Dr. Holohan responded that the reason the quarantine advice did not exist for travel on the island “is because in our assessment the island in broad terms is behaving as one."
The public health advice, he said, “relates to our assessment of the potential incubation period of this virus. Fourteen days is pretty much an international consensus. Very few countries are at variance with that particular measure."
According to the Times report, when asked when the quarantine would be lifted, Dr. Holohan replied: “I couldn’t give a commitment in relation to that.
“No measures that we have recommended of this kind will be in place for any longer than we believe is necessary.
“It is simply too early to give an assessment, given . . . the state of infection on the island, Great Britain in the U.S. and the rest of the world.”
