Press release
Minister for Health announces additions to list of designated States
From Department of Health
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Health
Published on
Last updated on
The Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly TD, has announced his intention to add an additional 16 States to the list of designated states. People arriving into Ireland from these states or transiting through them must complete Mandatory Hotel Quarantine.
The decision to add to the list of designated states was approved at a government meeting this evening. States being added to the designated list will be included as a priority on the booking system for mandatory hotel quarantine early next week, with passengers from these States entering quarantine starting from 04.00 on Thursday, 15 April.
Minister Donnelly said:
"Protecting public health as a matter of urgency has been to the fore of these decisions around mandatory quarantine. This is another strong move following public health advice relating to Variants of Concern with COVID-19. These variants pose a significant risk to our fight against this disease and our vaccination programme. This decision also reinforces Ireland’s biosecurity, ensuring we have the strongest measures in place in Europe."
The additional countries to be added to the list are: Bangladesh, Belgium, France, Italy, Kenya, Luxembourg, Pakistan, Turkey, the USA, Canada, Armenia, Bermuda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Curaçao, Maldives, Ukraine.
The Minister also intends to revoke the designation in place for: Albania, Israel and St. Lucia.
Anyone currently in mandatory quarantine who has travelled from or through these states must complete their period of quarantine.
In addition, all travellers into Ireland from non-designated countries must continue to adhere to ‘Home Quarantine’, and in addition to their arrival negative PCR test, from next week they must have booked through the HSE an appointment for a further test at day 5.
Minister Donnelly added:
"The government continues to advise against all non-essential international travel at this time. We can see a permanent pathway out of this pandemic but can’t allow Variants of Concern to set us back on the progress we have made.
"I would like to particularly thank my Ministerial colleagues in the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Transport and Defence, my officials in the Department of Health and across multiple government departments and other agencies in ensuring we can continue to act on public health advice."
The Expert Advisory Group on Travel (EAGT) was established on 1 March 2021 to develop a method of risk assessing States and consider all concerns COVID-19 poses for travel.
The Group meets every two weeks to recommend amendments to the list of Designated States, taking into account:
These recommendations are considered by the Chief Medical Officer who in turn makes a recommendation to the Minister for Health.
The EAGT has emphasised the ongoing risk presented by variants of concern, variants of interest and the challenge posed by the limited availability of data relating to the locations and spread of VOCs.
The group will give ongoing consideration to any other measures they deem required to reduce the risk of imported cases of COVID-19.