Kelly questions hotel quarantine anomaly

A Tipperary TD has questioned the time between the announcement of additional countries being added to the quarantine list and the imposition of restrictions.

Labour leader Alan Kelly’s comments come as a number of countries will be added to the list from Thursday including France, Belgium, Italy, America and Canada.

There are reports that this has led to people rushing to get into the country from these countries before the deadline.

Speaking on Tipp Today earlier Deputy Kelly said this was a concern.

“It does seem an anomaly that such a period of time is allowed and then people can come in in-between because we all know the whole purpose of this is to prevent variants (of Covid-10) coming into the country.”

“We saw the figures yesterday – they’re the best we’ve had since mid-December – which is really encouraging.”

“It shows that mandatory hotel quarantining (is working) given the fact we now know a number of people who have had variants and have had the infection were actually in hotel quarantine or are in hotel quarantine as we speak.”