Expert team advised forced self-isolation for all travelling into Ireland

People travelling into Ireland should be required to self-isolate for 14 days at a "designated facility", public health officials suggested to Government earlier this month.

Preparations should be made for imposing restrictions on non-essential travel from all countries outside the EU and the UK, aside from Irish citizens and residents, the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) also advised.

The proposal for mandatory quarantine for incoming travellers, with exceptions for supply chain workers and transiting passengers, has not yet been implemented.

In a letter to Minister for Health Simon Harris, chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said NPHET had considered mandatory quarantine but recognised preparatory work would be required to give effect to any Government decision.

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The group recommended the necessary “whole of Government work” be undertaken “to allow for Government decision on the introduction of a range of more stringent requirements relating to travel from overseas”.

NPHET also recommended that the completion of passenger locator forms be made mandatory; this measure was introduced this week.

A series of letters from Dr Holohan to Mr Harris were published on Tuesday.

In a letter on May 8th, Dr Holohan warns the NPHET is concerned that as the number of local cases of the disease falls and restrictions are eased, the relative importance of importing cases from overseas increases.

“The principal public health objective of NPHET’s advice is therefore to eliminate in as far as possible all non-essential travel. In particular, NPHET is concerned that Irish residents may be actively planning to resume travel overseas in the near term for tourism purposes.”

In another letter dated May 14th, Dr Holohan reports that at that point, there were five Covid-19 outbreak in prisons involving 18 cases; three in the Roma community involving 21 cases; five among Travellers involving 43 cases; eight in homeless facilities involving 15 cases; 12 in direct provision centres involving 149 cases; and 32 in workplaces including 12 in meat processing plants, where 571 cases have been notified.

NPHET also recommended the setting up of an expert independent panel on nursing homes to make recommendation to the Minister on planned protective response measures for the sector over the next 12-18 months, he said.

Committee

On Tuesday, speaking at the Oireachtas committee on Covid-19, Dr Holohan said he could not give a commitment on when the 14-day enforced self-isolation requirement would be lifted on passengers arriving at Irish ports and airports.

He said the public health advice was to “try and ensure that we limit travel from overseas”.

Dr Holohan was responding to Fine Gael TD Colm Brophy who warned 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”.

He said that “to a lot of people it seems a real displaced point that you have Northern Ireland with an open border coming across and going back and forward, as we all want, but you have people landing in Dublin airport with an effective 14-day lockdown, which will literally kill out tourism industry.”

Dr Holohan said however that “the reason it doesn’t exist for travel on the island is because in our assessment the island in broad terms is behaving as one”.

The public health advice “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.”

Asked when it would be lifted, Dr Holohan said “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 US and the rest of the world.”