Return to foreign travel will be ‘sluggish and protracted’

A leading Galway-based academic in the field of travel medicine has warned that the return to non-essential international travel in the wake of Covid-19 will be “sluggish and protracted” – but there could be positive behavioural change as a result of the pandemic.

Professor Gerard Flaherty of the NUI Galway School of Medicine has recently been appointed lead for the International Society of Travel Medicine (ITSM) Covid-19 taskforce that will examine research evidence to provide advice allowing for the safe resumption of international travel.

According to Prof Flaherty, enforcing compulsory quarantine measures on all inbound travellers should not be necessary as the pandemic progresses. More targeted isolation of infected individuals would be more effective and ally concerns over international travel which could have a devastating impact on countries reliant on tourism to maintain economic prosperity, he said.

Prof Flaherty said he and his colleagues in travel medicine were very comfortable with the concept of travel health risk – but most people had, up to this point, not recognised those risks.

“It is hard to imagine anything other than a sluggish and protracted return to non-essential international travel until we have a protective vaccine, or at least 60% natural herd immunity. The latter would take many years to achieve and would be a very risky strategy,” said the Athenry man.

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