Gabriel Scally: 'Ireland should crush Covid-19 by imposing stricter quarantine'

Speaking on RTÉ's 'This Week', Prof Gabriel Scally said Ireland ran the risk of a second wave of the coronavirus due to lax scrutiny of incoming passengers. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA

A leading health expert has said Ireland's best option is to crush the coronavirus completely, and declared it “such an error to leave the door open” to incoming foreign travel.

Professor Gabriel Scally, president of the public health section at the UK’s Royal Society of Medicine, said Ireland should be seeking to apply very strict quarantine measures to incoming visitors from foreign shores in the same manner as nations such as Taiwan and New Zealand, which have effectively crushed the virus within their borders.