The Government is expected to publish a ‘green list’ of countries people can travel to without quarantining by next week – despite the Chief Medical Officer warning that he ‘beyond nervous’ about any increase in foreign travel.

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning Tomás Ryan, Associate Professor at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College said officials must consider the ‘risk v benefit ratio’ before lifting the advice against all non-essential travel.

“The inconvenience of us not going on a summer holiday – even if we have already booked one which I admit is a problem – is relatively small compared to the potential inconvenience of schools not opening in September,” he said.

“It is relatively small compared to the inconvenience of, what if we have another surge which is related to the seeding of the COVID-19 from abroad?

“Keeping that in perspective I think is very important.”

A notice for arriving passengers arriving into Dublin Airport, 28-05-2020. Image: Brian Lawless/PA Wire/PA Images

Professor Ryan noted that 60% of Ireland’s incoming visitors would normally come from the US or the UK – both countries that have far higher rates of the virus than we do.

“If we were to take normal travel levels from them, we could be getting 50 to 70 new cases every day,” he said.

“After two weeks of that, we would multiply our active COVID-19 cases by a factor of five in Ireland.

“No-one wants that. Everyone agrees that these kinds of countries should not be coming here. Even Ryanair is advocating for countries that have lower COVID-19 than we do or the same levels but that will result in a very small slice of usual tourism market anyway.”

He said many people from potential green list countries will not choose Ireland for a holiday due to concerns over the low numbers of people wearing masks or observing social distancing and our poor testing and tracing system.

A Wizzair Airbus A321-231 lands at the Krakow-Balice International Airport in Poland. Picture by: SOPA Images/SIPA USA/PA Images

He said the country should use the summer months to build up our testing system instead of reopening the international tourism industry.

“We are just as vulnerable to this virus as we were before March,” he said. “We are basically back in that time zone of February to March and how we behave now is going to affect how this affects us in the future.

“Now this summer is our opportunity to get this right. To take advantage of our island status and to ensure a normal good quality of life for everyone.”

Professor Ryan said Ireland’s testing and tracing system needs to be rebuilt ahead of any second wave of the virus.

“It never operated at a consistently high enough capacity,” he said. “It is obviously going to have to be rebuilt in a more organised manner, a more coordinated manner. That is obviously going to happen over the summer but it is going to take some time for them to get that in place.

“We don’t currently have a rapid-response capacity to really suppress clusters if they arise in different parts of the country which could be catalysed by new cases coming into the country.”

He noted that Ireland currently has a flat curve and a low rate of COVID-19 and warned that if we are not careful with international travel, “we are going to get a lot of seeding of the virus which could undo all the work we have put in during lockdown.”

You can listen back to the full interview here: