A new call centre to track passengers arriving into Dublin Airport and airport and ports around Ireland from countries not on the green list will come into operation from Monday, August 17.
The centre will tackle the issue of follow-up calls to fliers arriving into the country who are required to self isolate for two weeks.
Also, passengers are currently required to fill out a paper form answering questions about their travelling arrangements but an electronic version is hoped to be launched by the HSE this month.
The Department of Justice had been responsible for follow-up calls to those passengers but shockingly only 7% of those arriving from non-green listed countries were contacted with only half of that percentage answering.
The Department of Transport will now take over the responsibility of contacting and monitoring those entering the country also confirming that the call centre will be in operation next Monday.
A spokesman for daa told Dublin Live: "We’ve been asked to help with the procurement of a call centre that will make calls to passengers arriving all at airports and ports in the Republic of Ireland."
In other Airport news, Hiqa warned that mass temperature checks at Dublin Airport would not help to stop the spread of Covid-19.
And it might be possible to become infected with the virus again, as it remains unclear just how long immunity against Covid-19 can last.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) published a report on the effectiveness of mass thermal screenings in airports.
The report, based on a review of other studies that relate to Covid-19 and other respiratory virus pandemics, is designed to support the National Public Health Emergency Team’s (NPHET’s) response to Covid-19.
It found that mass screening programmes using non-contact devices such as infrared thermal scanners did not prevent the spread of Covid-19.
It also found that mass screenings, which include temperature checks and self-reporting symptoms, did not help in identifying people who were infected with the virus.
Dr Máirín Ryan, HIQA’s Deputy CEO and Director of Health Technology Assessment, said: “Thermal screening has been used in other respiratory infectious disease outbreaks, such as the 2009 H1N1influenza pandemic in Asia and Australia, to improve detection and reduce the time to isolation of infected individuals.
“It typically involves a combination of fever screening, such as temperature testing, alongside self-reporting of exposure risk and or symptoms.
“However, the evidence clearly shows that this type of test is likely to be ineffective in limiting the spread of Covid-19.”
Mass temperature screenings are also very costly, while proving to be little help in the fight against Covid.
Dr Ryan said: “Thermal screening is noted to be high cost and resource intensive.
“Detection rates are very low due to a large proportion of cases that have no symptoms, are infectious before showing any symptoms or who do not present with fever.”
However, Hiqa only looked at the effectiveness of mass thermal screening within the context of airports, and not other settings such as schools. Therefore, its effectiveness in other community settings remains unclear.
