Letters to the Editor: Quarantine in hotels is not a prison sentence

With a low, relatively speaking, number of people inoculated in this country, the risks of importing the virus is very high in the absence of border controls

A bus outside the Crowne Plaza hotel, Santry, near Dublin Airport, where travellers arriving from one of 33 high risk countries will stay during a mandatory 12-day quarantine.

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh criticises mandatory hotel quarantine, likening it to a prison sentence and saying the time to introduce it was last year — inferring that he would have used it then — State quarantine is window dressing (Irish Examiner, Letters, April 13). Pardon my French but what a load of horse manure.

The science and the logic is very clear. With 2.4% of the small numbers quarantining testing positive for Covid-19 — similar to the current national positivity rate— the conclusion is irrefutable. And the available science tells us that while vaccines provide incredible levels of protection, those availing of them can still transmit the virus.