Introduce mandatory Covid testing for international travellers says local scientist

(Above) Professor Kingston Mills.

People travelling to and from Ireland will have to be tested for Covid-19 as part of the ongoing battle to reduce infection rates.

That's according to Mullingar native Kingston Mills, Professor of Experimental Immunology, School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity College Dublin, who says that a more rigorous testing system for people travelling to and from abroad has to be an integral part of the state's attempt to keep Covid-19 infection rates low when Ireland emerges from Level 5 restrictions.

When the first cases of Covid-19 were discovered in late February, Professor Mills was one of the first experts to call for the introduction of stricter travel restrictions from countries with high infection rates. If theses restrictions had been put in place he believes that the infection rates in Ireland would be significantly lower than they are today.

Speaking on RTE Radio 1, Professor Mills said that instead of “looking back, we need to look forward” and this includes implementing a new testing system for international travellers.

“What we need to do is introduce mandatory testing pre and post travel. This is an absolutely essential procedure for reducing the further importation of the virus. We have been told that a lot of the cases we have now are not from travel, but it is very difficult to pinpoint that. We saw some high profile examples of where one person coming back from a holiday infected, directly or indirectly, 50 people. There is no doubt that travel contributes to it.

“If we get down to very low numbers hopefully in the next few weeks, the big risk then is that other countries in Europe may not have done as well as we will and we will just bring it back in again unless we have efficient testing pre and post travel,” he said.