The hot topic of conversation online and in the news at the moment is whether or not the Irish will be granted permission to resume non-essential international travel on July 19.
As the date nears, there has been a lot of back and forth among experts and government officials as to what the plan will be.
Some fear the Delta variant can only be stopped with more hefty restrictions in Ireland before it takes hold, while others believe continued vaccination over the coming weeks should allow for Ireland’s planned easing to go ahead.
Speaking to RTE’s Brendan O’Connor this morning, Professor Kingston Mills of Trinity College echoed the latter and said he thinks international travel will resume.
He said the UK weren't tight enough with their restrictions on travel early on from India and that’s why they are seeing such a spike in cases of the Delta variant.
He said: “The UK were lax on the travel from India and that allowed the Indian variant in, which is now the dominant variant in the UK and is becoming dominant in Northern Ireland."
Professor Mills said it's inevitable that Delta will become dominant here and that we must be careful in our approach to repening, because "there are numbers of cases of delta coming in here through travel, with most of them by transmission locally now."
However, O’Connor then asked if we’re careful and people are either vaccinated, PCR tested, or have recovered from Covid - as the Covid passport will require - are we right to open international travel on July 19.
To which he responded: “Yes, I think if the travel is confined to those who are fully vaccinated or recovered from infection and have the appropriate testing in place for pre and post-travel I think that it’s possible.”
He referenced a study that was published in the US yesterday on travel where they looked at antigen testing in comparison with PCR for travel.
They found that the antigen testing done for pre-travel followed by a PCR test post-travel was an effective solution in catching a significant number of cases.
Professor Mills then said: “I think the combination of vaccination fully with proper testing should permit safe international travel.”
