Quarantine on visitors from abroad?

Brendan Burgess

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I am trying to understand why countries have 14 days quarantine on visitors from abroad.

OK, if Ireland is virus-free and China is the epicentre, then we should ban or quarantine visitors from China.

But why is Britain with a high incidence of the virus banning visitors from countries with a much lower level?

If we had quarantined everywhere back in October, it would have worked.

And if Ireland becomes virus-free, it might be necessary to keep the virus out.

But if we allow travel within Ireland at some stage, why would we not allow travel from outside Ireland?

Brendan
 
I dont get it either Brendan after listening at the start of the crisis that we cant act unilaterally with regard borders as part of the EU. I struggle to reconcile the ecomonic cost of this decision with the health risk involved of visiting a lot of European Countries.
 
I am trying to understand why countries have 14 days quarantine on visitors from abroad.

. . .

But why is Britain with a high incidence of the virus banning visitors from countries with a much lower level?

If we had quarantined everywhere back in October, it would have worked.

And if Ireland becomes virus-free, it might be necessary to keep the virus out.

But if we allow travel within Ireland at some stage, why would we not allow travel from outside Ireland?

Brendan
The mind boggles . . . but in the UK banning other countries (no matter how well that country handled the virus situation) deflects public attention from the doings of the Prime Minister and his underlings. [just my opinion].
 
I suspect it's just designed to discourage travel and keep numbers of tourists low. Just a very blunt sledgehammer approach as there is no workable scalpel option to target just those who might be carrying the virus.
 
I suspect it's just designed to discourage travel and keep numbers of tourists low. Just a very blunt sledgehammer approach as there is no workable scalpel option to target just those who might be carrying the virus.

Yep and not just visitors, I'd say also aimed at Irish people thinking of going abroad who might think twice about having to isolate for 2 weeks on return.
 
Unless I've either misread the SI or missed another SI that fills the gap, the law seems to make it a legal requirement only to fill in a "passenger locator form" indicating your whereabouts for 14 days. I can't find any reference to a 14 day quarantine period either in the statute or on the form itself. The locator form instructions even contemplate that you might relocate somewhere else during the 14 days, which hardly seems to be quarantine. It seems to have been constructed with contact tracing in mind and not quarantine. Have I missed something?

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2020/si/181/made/en/print
 
The government is going to publish the green list of countries on monday where we can travel without having to do quarantine on return. I presume the UK safelist would be a good guide, you are allowed to travel to Spain , Greece, France, Germany,Poland, Netherlands and Italy and Croatia without quarantine on return. What are the safest countries of these because presumably they will definitely be on irish green list.
 
A|re there any private testing facilities available? If someone arrives in Dublin airport can they get a test done and isolate until the results are in?
 
A|re there any private testing facilities available? If someone arrives in Dublin airport can they get a test done and isolate until the results are in?
I would be also interested in finding out about such a facility, if anyone is aware of it. I think it would make great sense to have everyone tested on arrival at the airport, send them to self-isolate and give them their results once they come in. It wouldn't catch every infection but it would catch a lot more than they are catching at the moment.
 
The tests don't detect the virus early in the incubation period, so you'd need to test again a week or more later.

I haven't heard of any private swabbing service, there are some FDA approved self-check kits in the states costing around $120, but the challenge here is the majority of people won't go deep enough with the swab to get a proper sample. A lot of the false negative results are being attributed to poor swab technique. Saliva tests are being developed that will greatly simplify that though.

I believe most of the private labs with the capability were taken over / are contracted to support state testing. Earlier this month the HSE said they had 46 different public and private labs around the country giving them a capacity of 15,000 tests a day at a cost of €450M this year. In the first few days of July, Dublin airport was seeing 9,500 passengers a day, (2019 average was over 90k a day) so we'd need to be building more labs and training a lot more testers to offer significant levels of testing there.
 
The tests don't detect the virus early in the incubation period, so you'd need to test again a week or more later.

I haven't heard of any private swabbing service, there are some FDA approved self-check kits in the states costing around $120, but the challenge here is the majority of people won't go deep enough with the swab to get a proper sample. A lot of the false negative results are being attributed to poor swab technique. Saliva tests are being developed that will greatly simplify that though.

I believe most of the private labs with the capability were taken over / are contracted to support state testing. Earlier this month the HSE said they had 46 different public and private labs around the country giving them a capacity of 15,000 tests a day at a cost of €450M this year. In the first few days of July, Dublin airport was seeing 9,500 passengers a day, (2019 average was over 90k a day) so we'd need to be building more labs and training a lot more testers to offer significant levels of testing there.
I think that may be the medium term solution. We need to plan for living with Covid19 for the next few years and construct the infrastructure we need accordingly. Fast reliable testing is paramount if we are to reopen the country.
 
Fast reliable testing is paramount if we are to reopen the country.

Yeah, the current nasal / throat swab tests won't get us there. Needs to be easy enough to be a reliable self-test, ideally without the need for lab processing.
 
Note that the advice has changed that arrivals from abroad should only "restrict their movements" rather than completely self-isolate \ cocoon.

The HSE advice currently states that – aside from some limited exceptions – anyone entering Ireland must restrict their movements for 14 days.
The advice, on the HSE website, states: “Restricting your movements means staying at home and avoiding contact with other people and social situations as much as possible.” Currently, people should not:
  • Use public transport
  • Visit others
  • Meet face-to-face with anyone who is at a higher risk from Covid-19
  • Go to the shop unless absolutely necessary.
 
What are the 8 countries in Europe with the lowest corona virus rates over last 14 days. It's actually not an easy statistic to find out because countries like Germany are not that low in numbers but have large population so are reasonably safe. The statistics for corona virus per capita show the total corona virus incidence since the start which are useless, it's the statistics for last 2 weeks that's important
 
Government still faffing about in this and can't make a decision on the green list, they only using Michael Martin being in Brussels as an excuse. Can fly back through Belfast anyways and drive back down
 
Government still faffing about in this and can't make a decision on the green list, they only using Michael Martin being in Brussels as an excuse. Can fly back through Belfast anyways and drive back down
Yea, we need a hard border with the UK. Build a Wall and make the Brits pay for it!
 
Has anyone seen suggestions from those calling for a full quarantine of visitors arriving from abroad on how it might actually work?
 
Has anyone seen suggestions from those calling for a full quarantine of visitors arriving from abroad on how it might actually work?
I heard a discussion on the wireless and the gist of it was that they should be bussed/transported to a hotel which the State rents and kept there for 14 days. There's plenty of hotels near the airport.
I'd prefer testing them at arrival (even if that's in a local hotel) and letting them go on their merry way a few hours later if they don't have the disease. If they do have it we could treat them/ deport them/ shoot them. The full cost should be covered by the traveller.
 
I heard a discussion on the wireless and the gist of it was that they should be bussed/transported to a hotel which the State rents and kept there for 14 days. There's plenty of hotels near the airport.

Yeah, I'm not sure they've really thought it through. Dublin would need about 100k extra bed spaces to accommodate current arrival numbers at Dublin airport for 14 days. Testing is unlikely to become sensitive enough to detect the virus in the first few days of infection so you then have the challenge of how to stop these hotels becoming hotbeds of transmission with more infected people leaving them than arrive.
 
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