Incoming travellers may be required to take two Covid tests with quarantine in between

The Government is considering requiring international travellers to have two PCR tests for Covid-19 five days apart with quarantine in between after arriving here, the Tánaiste has told the Dáil.

Leo Varadkar said a decision would be made "quite soon" on the proposal, which is the model Iceland uses.

He was responding in the Dáil on Thursday to Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty, who claimed the Government was ignoring a National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) recommendation on this two-test strategy.

Mr Doherty said it was a “failure of Government to end discretion on a post-arrival PCR test for international arrivals”.

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The Donegal TD said that "the best performance of a pre-departure test [for Covid-19, as currently required] will miss up to 40 per cent of cases".

Mr Varadkar said consideration was being given to the two-test proposal, and pointed out that in the North, where Sinn Féin was in government, passengers arriving at Belfast airport do not have one, "never mind two", Covid-19 tests on arrival.

The Tánaiste also said that as of Wednesday 3 million Covid-19 PCR tests have been carried out in the Republic, "more per head than many countries we're often compared to, like Germany, Finland and Australia".

‘National aggressive strategy’

Labour leader Alan Kelly called for a "national aggressive strategy" to suppress the virus. He said the Covid-19 vaccine was not going to be the panacea people thought it would be and work was needed on suppressing the virus.

Mr Varadkar said a detailed debate was needed on the practicalities of various strategies being proposed and the Government would keep an open mind on proposals.

The Government strategy is to get Covid-19 levels “as low as possible between now and March 5th”, the Tánaiste said.

He said that during that period “we do want to bring about the phased reopening of schools, starting with children with additional and special needs”.

He said that “we are cracking down very severely on international travel”, which he said “is already down 97 per cent”.

He also said the State would only be opened up when it was safe to do so and it would not go down to Level 4 from the current Level 5 restrictions only to have to lock down further three weeks later.

The Government already required incoming travellers to have a negative PCR test for Covid-19 taken prior to departure and they would be subject to mandatory hotel quarantining if they did not have such a result with them on arrival, he added.

"People coming from high-risk countries like Brazil and South Africa are going to be subject to mandatory hotel quarantining whether they have a negative test result or not. And it is our intention to expand that as we develop the capability and capacity to do that."

UK variant

Aontú TD Peadar Tóibín criticised the strategy on international travel. He said Government Ministers were saying international travel was not a big contributor to the spread of the virus but also that the new variant first discovered in the UK now accounted for 63 per cent of Covid-19 cases.

Mr Varadkar also told Independent TD Mattie McGrath that “we have 400 to 500 beds free across the hospital system today, with 121 people on trolleys”, mainly for clinical reasons.

Mr McGrath highlighted the case of St Brigid's hospital in Carrick-on-Suir and criticised the HSE, which had deemed the facility suitable for Covid-19 care but not for respite and palliative care.

Mr Varadkar said his understanding was that the centre would be developed as a healthcare facility, including use as a diabetes clinic.