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The “crude” air travel quarantine isn’t working but is damaging Ireland’s economy, business representatives have said.
Danny McCoy, chief executive officer of business group Ibec, said the two-week isolation rule for arrivals needs to be balanced against the toll it is taking on tourism, aviation and other sectors.
“It is a non effective quarantine, let’s face up to that,” he said.
“All that is required here legally is to fill in the forms.”
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Mr McCoy was responding to calls by a State-appointed taskforce for the existing quarantine requirement, in place to curb the spread of coronavirus, to be dropped completely.
“The proportion of people who have this (coronavirus) at the moment is incredibly small and we are asking everybody who is travelling in to take two weeks out for something they probably don’t have, to the point of trying to catch one,” he told RTÉ’s Today with Sarah McInerney.
“Tracing and testing is the issue here, not crude quarantines.”
Interim report
In an interim report on Tuesday, the State-appointed Taskforce for Aviation Recovery said the 14-day quarantine period “makes non-essential and discretionary travel challenging, and inhibits business-related travel, which is critical for the Irish economy”.
“The taskforce notes that implementation of efficient test and trace regimes can provide effective alternatives to the current 14-day quarantine measure,” it stated.
The taskforce wants travel restrictions lifted “ideally” by July 1st.
But a leading public health expert is warning that relaxing current air travel restrictions could threaten a second wave of coronavirus deaths in Ireland.
Dr Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, said he favoured the concept of so-called “air bridges” with countries who have brought the virus under control but rejected calls to drop quarantines.
“I don’t think that should happen,” he said.
“I doubt if very many people outside the aviation industry would think that is a sensible thing to do. We need to keep up the barriers at the moment. I think the way forward is first of all to have a zero Covid island of Ireland, and then to make the travel links with other places with a similarly good situation.”
Dr Scally said the coronavirus crisis was not under control in the likes of the UK and the US, countries with which Ireland traditionally has strong air travel links, while the rise in cases globally is “very, very worrying indeed”.
“This is a public health emergency and I very strongly feel public health concerns have to trump airline worries,” he said.
“So the only safe way is to have a zero-Covid Ireland and to try and ensure we don’t import cases. Of course people can come, but there has to be a satisfactory quarantine arrangements to make sure we are not importing cases.”
Arrival
Dr Scally blamed air travel for the arrival of Covid-19 in Ireland.
“That’s how it got here in the first place. It was imported by air,” he said.
“We don’t need new cases when things are going really well domestically. We don’t need a second wave.”
Dr Scally also called for the government to consider stricter measures if people flout the current two week quarantine requirements after arriving in the country.
Over time, as more countries decide to eliminate the virus, more opportunities will open up for air bridges, said Dr Scally, who added he was in favour of that approach.
However, Eddie Wilson, chief executive of Ryanair, said air bridges won’t work.
“I think the concept of air bridges is a fudge, really,” he said.
“If you are going to do that from Europe, where you’ve got the Schengen area, and even if you exclude some countries, (passengers will) still be able to move from one country to another.”
Mr Wilson said the concept was another “form filling exercise” at a time when “everyone in Europe is now flying as a normal… and we’re out of step here in Ireland,” Mr Wilson told Newstalk.