Calls for 'Zero Covid' strategy increase as CMO admits 40% of incoming cases are missed

Some 2,332 people entered Ireland from previously banned countries, the UK and South Africa, in the three days after that ban was lifted on January 8.

Ireland needs to employ a "zero Covid" strategy as it “has nothing to lose” by doing so, while current measures will simply lead to more lockdowns, a leading academic has said.

With positive cases of Covid-19 remaining stubbornly high, the number of travellers coming into Ireland has once more come centre stage, with Tánaiste Leo Varadkar describing mandatory quarantine for incoming passengers as being “unworkable”.

Some 33,000 people are now entering Ireland per week, Mr Varadkar said in the Dáil, “the vast majority of them for essential reasons”.

A response to a parliamentary question tabled by Social Democrat Catherine Murphy has shown, however, that some 2,332 people entered Ireland from previously banned countries, the UK and South Africa, in the three days after that ban was lifted on January 8.

Those travellers would have come from countries which had been banned due to the presence of new variants of Covid-19 with heightened transmissibility, while Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan has now said that Ireland’s testing regime for travel, as it stands, is missing as many as 40% of incoming cases.

Prof Anthony Staines: 'What we’re doing at the moment is pointless because it’s not being properly enforced.' Picture: Denis Minihane

Meanwhile, with the likelihood of an extension of level 5 restrictions until at least the middle of February, Professor Anthony Staines of the School of Nursing at DCU – a prominent advocate of zero Covid – said there is no time like the present to aim for a different approach.

“What we’re doing at the moment is pointless because it’s not being properly enforced,” he said. 

"The vast majority of people are behaving themselves. What you’ve to worry about are the people who are not.”

He said if we continue to use the approach of living with the virus as is currently the case, it will “probably mean another two lockdowns at least later in the year”.

Continuing in our current manner will see more people getting sick, more people dying, and everyone getting hit in terms of jobs and businesses.”

Zero Covid involves driving the virus to as close to zero community transmission as possible and keeping it there, via a single draconian lockdown, followed by aggressive quarantining of incoming travel and an emphasis on public health contact tracing.

Professor Staines said “your guess is as good as mine” as to why neither Government nor the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) has been willing to contemplate a zero Covid strategy.

He stressed, however, that Nphet does not engage with the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group (ISAG) he co-founded last June.

This is in contrast with the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which does engage with independent thinking on the subject of Covid.

In terms of zero Covid, Prof Staines said: 

We can continue cycling through lockdowns, or we can open in April. It depends on how early we start.”

In order to do so, mandatory quarantine would have to be applied at airports. In the Dáil yesterday, it emerged that 49% of incoming travellers were not revealing where they plan to stay in Ireland during their advised isolation period.

“You take people from a plane, you take them to a hotel, you say ‘here’s your room – stay in it',” Prof Staines said.