Ireland considering adding US, France, Germany to hotel quarantine list

The Irish government is considering health officials’ advice to add more countries including the United States, Germany and France to a list of jurisdictions subject to mandatory hotel quarantine on arrival, Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said. Ireland has some of the strictest travel resrictions in the European Union and last week followed neighbouring England in bringing in hotel quarantine for arrivals from countries deemed “high risk” or those without a negative COVID-19 test. The Irish Independent newspaper reported earlier on Tuesday that officials had recommended a more than doubling of the list of high risk jurisdictions with the addition of 43 countries. It also named Italy as being among those under consideration. Varadkar said more countries would be added but that the government had to decide first whether to exempt vaccinated travellers, examine if it had the hotel capacity and sort out issues around EU freedom of movement rules when considering including other member states.<br/>