10-08-20, 11:50
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Irish Set to Ban US Citizens From Flights to Ireland...
Irish Set to Ban US Citizens From Flights to Ireland Starting This Week
Travel from COVID-19 hot spots, such as the USA and Brazil, will be banned by Ireland by the end of this week.
Irish Central, 10 AUG 2020.
A red-list of countries from which essential travel will be prohibited will be published by the Irish government, as it moves to align itself with other EU states in its fight against the coronavirus.
Ireland's Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, and acting Chief Medical Officers Dr. Ronan Glynn, along with senior officials at Ireland's Department of Health have had discussions on several restrictions. These were then discussed by Cabinet and the preliminary proposals were given an informal go-ahead.
The Irish Times, reports the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) has supported these restrictions.
Irish citizens and residents traveling home to Ireland, along with European citizens and essential workers traveling will be exempt from bans. These restrictions will not necessarily see the number of flights to and from those countries listed on the red list decrease. Freight business on transatlantic routes will also continue.
More than 2 million tourists from the United States and Canada visit Ireland every year. They contribute a massive $2 billion to Ireland's tourism industry, which supports 325,000 jobs. Despite a sharp fall in those numbers during the pandemic, the Irish government says as many as 250 Americans are still arriving in Ireland every day many not wearing masks.
A screenshot from the Coronavirus App, on 10 Aug, 2020, showing the COVID hotspots.
So far, the number of cases of COVID-19 in Ireland linked to international travel is small. However, Minister Donnelly believes more needs to be done to contain the virus in Ireland and one step to this restricting travel.
A spokesperson for Minister Donnelly has said these new travel ban measures will bring Ireland into line with other European countries.
The Ministry spokesperson stressed that there "are no plans to make any changes to the current operation of the green list, which is already reviewed every two weeks”.
NBC News reports that in the United States the number of COVID-19 cases has now surpassed five million. Several states have seen an uptick in the past 14 days.
They state "In Florida, for example, where flights are still departing for Ireland, the coronavirus-related death rate is 6 per 100,000 cases — 30 times higher than the current rate in Ireland over the past two weeks, which is 0.2."
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