Quarantine plans to isolate people coming from a list of high-risk countries in hotels don’t go far enough, a Northern Ireland expert warned.
Professor Helen Dolk, member of the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group (ISAG), has called on the executive branch to implement a zero-tolerance approach in the fight against Covid-19.
This week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that travelers returning to the UK from “Red List” countries will be sent to quarantine hotels for 10 days.
Mr Johnson told the Commons on Wednesday that passengers from 30 countries, including Chile, South Africa and Portugal, will be “picked up at the airport and placed directly in quarantine”. The executive has not yet announced its plans for quarantine hotels.
However, Prof. Dolk, Professor of Epidemiology and Health Research at Ulster University, said, “At this critical time we are off to a good start for the vaccination we need to preserve and in such a health crisis I would be a lot do to stay one step ahead of the virus I would prefer a blanket hotel quarantine requirement and then see where exceptions can be safely made, rather than the other way around.
“The problem with such partial bans is that people are finding another way to get into the country, which is very difficult to control. Also, other new variants will appear in other countries, some of which don’t do much genomic screening and do one partial ban will delay the response to these new high risk countries.
“We now have a vaccine and great strides have been made, but we’ve also seen the risk of variants and a vaccine-resistant variant could destroy the vaccination strategy. So we have to take this incredibly seriously.”
A health ministry spokesman said: “There has been ongoing discussion between the four nations about possible stricter border measures that could be put in place.
“There is often a coordination between England and decentralized administrations, where this is operationally possible.” There is also an open dialogue with representatives of the RoI to see how we can work together. “
The ISAG, made up of a number of scientists, academics and researchers, is campaigning for a Covid-19 elimination strategy for the island of Ireland.
Prof. Dolk said the experiences of countries like Australia and New Zealand have shown that this is possible.
However, she said officials here need to take a number of steps to get the cases as close to zero as possible while ensuring that officials can respond quickly to future outbreaks.
She said better financial support for people in need of isolation and a more effective testing and traceability system are key components in an elimination strategy.
She continued, “A lot of work has been done in 2020 to tackle the pandemic. Now that we have arrived in 2021, we need to reassess why we are in where we are and what we are doing better The strategy we had to open up An upturn in the economy at the earliest possible moment has created a cycle of lockdowns and restrictions.
“I think we need to stop looking at health and economics as opposites. Both health and economics will benefit from low virus levels.”
