Internal lockdowns are futile if we leave the back door of foreign travel wide open

My article in today's Irish Independent

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/our-lockdowns-efforts-seem-futile-while-back-door-of-foreign-travel-is-wide-open-39587737.html

When we cancelled our trip to the UK this summer, my child took it on the chin. He pined for his British grandma, but travelling to the country with the highest coronavirus death rate in the world at the time, would have jeopardised the hard won gains of lockdown.

Like most people, we heeded Dr Tony Holohan’s warning that the reintroduction of foreign travel was a "major threat," increasing the risk of a second-wave of Covid-19. With the front door of domestic lockdown largely secured however, the back door of foreign travel was left wide open. Tourism into Dublin Port trebled from just 7,165 in May to 23,972 in August, unabated even after a resurgence of new infections was attributed to foreign travel from countries, including Britain.  

 Whilst the EU banned flights from the worst coronavirus hotspots including the US, they enjoy unfettered access to our beleaguered shores. Even as warnings grew of American tourists openly flouting quarantine, rather than tightening restrictions, our government weakened them further. Cases increased, contact tracers became overwhelmed but, rather than stemming the flow of imported infections by closing external borders, our government shut internal borders instead.

 On the day three counties were put into lockdown, I spoke to a demoralised Garda friend at a checkpoint. “I’m policing the movements of Irish citizens while tourists can roam freely - no questions asked”. The next day, my son counted 12 UK campervans on a short stretch of road and said, “How can you restrict your movements for 14 days with 3 kids and a dog in a campervan”? Bottom lip wobbling (missing grandma) he added, “It’s not fair”.

Countries, such as New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea, that have pursued a zero-Covid approach by closing their borders have opened up everything else, resuming normal lives, mitigating damage to their economies and preventing avoidable deaths. This is not only a legitimate, but necessary, biosecurity response to protect citizens against a deadly disease.

 As Tomas Pueyo wrote in the New York Times, countries that opened their arms to neighbours too soon “got infected in the hug”.

For months, Leo Varadkar warned that mandatory quarantine might be illegal, despite the WHO’s guidance stating, “Quarantine is included within the legal framework of the International Health Regulations (2005)”. Having wasted two vital months, Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly, admitted that mandatory quarantine wasn’t illegal after all but declined to enforce it anyway. On 9 august, when 3 counties were placed in lockdown, Donnelly asked our elderly to go back into quarantine essentially (some never left) promising that his Department would prepare a plan to restrict non-essential travel from countries with high rates of coronavirus. Almost two months later, no plan has emerged. Our vulnerable remain in hiding.

 So why does our government persist with this purgatorial cycle of political paralysis? Incompetence is the obvious front runner, but the elephant in the room is undoubtedly the behemothic aviation lobby. Ubiquitous in the media, irrespective of the question, respondents invariably deploy the old “2%” decoy.

On 2 July, Stephen Donnelly announced that new cases from international travel had gone up from 2% to 17% in the previous week. On 20 July it went up to 21%, yet ministers continue to claim that “only 2%” of infections are related to foreign travel. The government dashboard shows a flat-line trajectory, indicating that it hasn’t been updated since April. Given this dubious data is injudiciously invoked by the aviation lobby as a proverbial “dead cat”, I asked the HSE for a breakdown on how it was established? No explanation has been forthcoming.

Given resource stricken contact tracers only go back two days, it’s highly likely that foreign travel goes undetected, captured later under “community transmission”, which basically means “unknown”. A statistician acquaintance argues that, since coronavirus was originally imported from overseas in February, foreign travel actually accounts for 100% of cases in Ireland.

NPHET has repeatedly warned that the importation of cases from people travelling to Ireland from other countries would cause a second wave. Dr Ronan Glynn advised that mandatory quarantine should be put in place for all people travelling into Ireland from abroad — regardless of whether the country is on the green list. If that’s “unworkable”, he said, Ireland should introduce a ban on all non-essential travel to countries where the virus is highly prevalent, such as the US.

 Instead, in a sop to Ryanair, Leo Varadkar removed the deterrent of “non-essential” travel relating to the risible “green list” in September. This was a key contention in Ryanair’s legal action against the government’s pandemic travel advice and despite losing the case on Friday, Ryanair was gifted this concession anyway. Encouraging overseas holidays in the midst of a global pandemic smacks of state sponsored hedonism, underwritten by our jaded health and essential workers.

 

Coronavirus, unlike fawning governments, cannot be bullied, bribed or blackmailed into submission. As long as borders remain open, the rest of society faces a relentless, excruciating, futile cycle of persecutory lockdowns only to “open” again - at 50% capacity. All the while looking over our shoulder as the virus circulates within our communities like a silent assassin.

Last week, I sat with my sobbing son watching his beloved grandma’s funeral streamed from the UK and I felt his agonising loss and his sacrifice, made all the harder for knowing that it was squandered.