A leading public health expert has warned that unnecessary foreign travel is "too big a risk" in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Professor Philip Nolan, chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET)'s Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, voiced his concerns as Ireland enters phase three of lifting restrictions.
Speaking on Morning Ireland on RTE Radio 1, he said: "We need to remember that the virus is still out there, we need to prioritise, of all the things we can do, what things are most important and when we're doing them, be very careful not to spread the virus.
"In other parts of the world, there are quite high levels of the virus in some countries and increasing levels in some countries.
"Right now this country doesn't need the risk and the burden of bringing cases into the country unnecessarily."
Prof Nolan added that out of 113 new coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past two weeks in Ireland, 12 of these were travel-related.
He revealed: "11% of all cases were travel-related. And the difficulty with travel-related cases, they can often get into the country and begin to spread before you detect them.
"It's a particularly dangerous form of introduction of the virus, it spreads quite quickly.
"We had a lot of travel-related infection early in the pandemic, very little in the middle because restrictions were so tight.
"For us, this is an early warning sign for the potential for travel-related infection to increase."
Prof Nolan cautioned: "Certainly from my perspective, right now, unnecessary travel abroad is just too big a risk to be allowed to happen."
He revealed travel-related infections have been connected to EU countries, Middle Eastern countries and the United States.
Reflecting on the possibility of "air bridges" between Ireland and other countries, Professor Nolan said it was important that EU countries work together.
"I think it's very important that the European Union works together, cautiously. We do want to increase the amount of travel over time that can occur across Europe but it does need to be a collective effort.
"We need to be very clear on the criteria, we need to be very clear on the data across countries that tells us what's safe and what's not safe and also I think we need to prioritise.
"Just because we can do something now doesn't mean we should do it.
"All movement, all contact carries some risk of transmitting the virus so we as individual citizens need to think about what's important to us."
