DUBLIN (IRELAND) – Ireland’s health minister said on Wednesday that the “green list” of countries which are exempt from travel curbs is under review. This comes in the wake of a spike in the number of infections in Ireland, making inclusions to the list too risky an affair.
In July, the Irish government dropped mandatory 14-day quarantine for arrivals from a list of 15 European countries, which was revised to 10 on August 4.
The list has not been revised since Ireland’s 14-day cumulative cases per 100,000 of population went above 30 from around three when the measure was brought in.
“If we essentially pegged the countries that qualify to our own rate, we would have something perverse happening, which is as the prevalence of COVID increased in Ireland, we would be opening ourselves up to more and more countries with high rates of COVID,” Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said.
“If we were simply to do that, it would self-evidently lead to a higher spread of the virus in the country. That’s why we have it under review at the moment.”
