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.

He said that the key to achieving that goal would be a need for “strong cooperation” between the Northern Assembly executive and the Government in order for the issue of the land border between the two to be handled efficiently.

Speaking on RTE Radio 1’s This Week, Prof Scally expressed scepticism as to the current quarantine procedures, which are limited to visitors filling out passenger locator forms upon arrival in the country while committing to spending two weeks in isolation at a named address.

However, the policing of those measures is limited at best, with only a fraction of those arriving followed up on regarding their quarantine, and with even fewer answering those calls.

“We are reaching crisis point across the world — it is such an error to leave the door open. We need to remember that the virus came to Ireland via international tourist travel, and it could come back in really substantial numbers from across the world,” he said.

Regarding the pending publication of a so-called green list of countries from where travellers will not be expected to quarantine, due to be published after today's meeting of Cabinet, he said, “the controls are not strong enough”.

We will take flights from Athens who then get to Dublin, but from where did the people come from to get to Athens?

Prof Scally argued that “Ireland could be zero Covid and life could go back to normal,” if heightened quarantine was observed.

“We are at a seminal moment, a fork in the road, here,” he said. “One way leads to a zero-Covid Ireland, the other time we have a very bumpy time over the next number of months, and who knows what the winter will bring?”

He argued that one method of quarantine that could be considered would be to have incoming travellers tested three days before embarking on their journey, with another test being taken upon arrival, and the people in question being “held until it’s negative”.

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath, said that the point of the green list was a need to acknowledge that some countries are doing better than others.

“I think we have won the argument so far, and I think that is why Ireland is doing quite well,” he said.