Five more countries added to mandatory quarantine list

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galway daily news Just one COVID patient in the ICU at University Hospital Galway

Five additional countries have been added to the mandatory hotel quarantine list for people arriving in the state.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly announced on Friday that people arriving from Afghanistan, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Trinidad and Tobago must go into hotel quarantine for two weeks.

People arriving to Ireland having been in or transited through these States in the previous 14 days must enter Mandatory Hotel Quarantine.

These countries will soon be added to the booking system for quarantining at these hotels.

It is a legal requirement that all travellers to Ireland must have a negative or ‘not detected’ result from a COVID-19 RT-PCR test carried out no more than 72 hours before their arrival.

Due to concerns about the new variant of COVID-19, people travelling from Great Britain are strongly advised to avail of free testing five days after arrival in Ireland, and to strictly adhere to the legal requirements for home quarantine.

There are currently no EU countries on the list of designated states, and the system came under criticism from the European Commission as overly restrictive back in April.