THE first three cases of the Brazilian Covid variant arrived into Ireland on January 26 – a full 25 days before the HSE said the dreaded strain was here.
Last night, in response to questions from the Irish Mail on Sunday, the HSE also confirmed that the three infected passengers stayed in an airport hotel for weeks after they arrived in Dublin.
‘The flight on which the three individuals infected with the variant arrived in Dublin on the 26th of January,’ confirmed Dr Lorraine Doherty, Clinical Director Health Protection, HSE HPSC.
‘The three individuals walked to an airport hotel, where they selfisolated for 14 days. Two of the individuals returned positive test results initially and the third returned a positive test following the development of symptoms a few days later, while still isolating.’
About two dozen international flights – from locations such as the US, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London – touched down in Dublin that day.
But the HSE has declined to specify which flight the travellers were on. We also do not know what hotel they stayed in or how this arrangement came about.
Now questions will be asked about why the HSE only confirmed the presence of the P1 variant in Ireland in a rushed press release after 9pm on February 19th – 25 days after the passengers landed.
Typically, it takes the National Virus Reference Laboratory seven to 10 days to confirm a variant via sequencing.
After announcing the presence of the P1 variant here, it then took another week for the HSE to confirm the actual date those passengers arrived and the fact that they stayed in an airport hotel for weeks afterwards.
The HSE said ‘an extensive operation was conductedto trace and contact and organise re-testing of all passengers on the flight, and to inform the airline.
‘All appropriate Public Health measures have been implemented, in order to prevent the onward transmission of infection, and no further VOC [Variants of Concern] related to this flight have been reported,’ Dr Doherty said.
But there’s a lot more the HSE is not saying.
This week, the MoS asked a number of questions of the HSE – of which 11 remain unanswered, these include:
1. When precisely did these virus samples go for sequencing, how long did the pre-sequencing and sequencing take?
2. What precise flight from which airline were the infected passengers on?
3. What stopovers did these travellers make en route from Brazil?
4. How many people – crew and passengers – were on the arriving flight into Dublin?
5. Where had these crew and the aircraft concerned travelled to in the period between their arrival in Dublin and the P1 sequencing result and what has the airline done to mitigate further virus spread?
6. How many people on the Dublin flight were designated as close contacts by our public health teams and have all these contacts been successfully traced?
