The bickering between politicians North and South over the coronavirus response has been, ‘extraordinarily unhelpful and shocking,’ according to public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally.

He was speaking after the Government extended Level Five restrictions until March 5th at the earliest.

Meanwhile, restrictions on international travel are to be tightened up, with mandatory quarantine to be introduced for passengers arriving into the country without a negative test.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Dr Scally he was pleased to see “some movement” on travel restrictions – but warned that the strategy does not go far enough.

“Britain and Ireland, across the countries of the world, have been some of the few that haven’t really had any meaningful restrictions on travel in and out,” he said.

“That is a dreadful position to be in when you are trying to cope with one of the mot infectious and dangerous diseases we have seen in a century.

“I welcome them but you can’t half seal your borders. You can’t half keep the cases out and you can’t half quarantine – so it is a question of how thorough the measures are.”

"Extraordinarily disappointed"

He said politicians North and South need to sit down and hammer out a proper strategy for dealing with the virus.

“I have been extraordinarily disappointed at their inability to do anything,” he said.

“We have a memorandum of understanding with Northern Ireland in terms of COVID-19, which promises harmonisation, cooperation and so on, and we have seen almost nothing, as a result – different rules and regulation on different parts of the island.

“The politicians need to sit down and sort it out. The spats over the last week between politicians north and south about the passage of information from locator forms, about whether or not the North is testing for the variant are all extraordinarily unhelpful and, I mean, shocking.”

Cross-border support

He said there is huge support among the public on both sides of the border for a joined-up response.

“The public, both North and South, are very much in favour of tighter restrictions on incoming cases,” he said. “Particularly incoming visitors bringing cases in and particularly with the variants coming in.

“So, there is a huge amount of public support for this and one of the problems is that, we can talk about a strategy for getting back to normal or whatever - but there isn’t a proper strategy for dealing with COVID.

Restrictions

The new travel restrictions will see passengers without tests forced to isolate in a hotel for two weeks, along with those arriving from Brazil and South Africa.

The Government has also suspended visa-free short-term travel from South America and South Africa.

Dr Scally said all passengers should face the same restrictions, regardless of where they arrive in from.

He said passengers should not be released from quarantine – even if they sit a negative test five days after arriving in Ireland.

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