On Friday, a year after the pandemic began and 10 months after the State's public health advisory body recommended its introduction, a limited form of mandatory quarantine will finally be activated for people coming to the State. Last May, around the same time that the National Public Health Emergency Team was advising that incoming travellers be held at designated facilities to ensure they were not bringing Covid-19 to Ireland, then taoiseach Leo Varadkar was lamenting that even asking visitors to fill in forms to self-isolate for 14 days was "not good for tourism". In July, he said "we know that mandatory quarantine is not possible in Ireland".

And yet here we are. In the 10 months that passed while two governments refused to take such an obvious step as this, tens of thousands of people have entered the State by air and sea from countries where the virus was rampant, introducing all the major variants of concern and undoubtedly worsening the country's epidemic. The regime belatedly introduced this week is largely symbolic: it applies only to 33 countries and excludes many that have lost control of the disease. Visitors from those countries will continue to arrive unimpeded, and some of them will bring the virus with them. Even within the group of 33 affected states, there are exemptions for TDs, MEPs, diplomats or "office-holders" who were away on official business. As People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy has pointed out, the new system is indeed a deterrent – but only for the small number of people who are actually affected by it.

It's not a coincidence that places with strict travel restrictions, including Hong Kong, China, New Zealand and Australia, are among those that have fared best in keeping the virus out. Yet for most of the pandemic, travellers have been free to come to the State without even having to produce a negative PCR test result. Even a limited quarantine regime is better than none. But the failure to grapple seriously with the dangers posed by inward travel will remain one of the more perplexing errors of the national pandemic response.

Hospital Report