AMERICANS who have recently made the trip to Ireland have said how much more comfortable they feel about coronavirus on Irish shores compared to their own.
Hundreds of visitors have been arriving from the US over the past couple of weeks, some for holidays and others to visit family, but the general consensus among them seems to be that they've a better chance of avoiding catching Covid-19 here than they do back home.
Despite this, Ireland has experienced a recent surge in cases since air travel links to North American were reopened, but every passenger arriving at Dublin Airport felt that their six-hour journey across the Atlantic was justified.
Damian Flanagan, who lives in Miami, Florida, told the Irish Daily Mail he urgently needed to be with his sick mother here in Ireland.
He added that people were becoming complacent in Florida which saw a record high of 15,300 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday.
02/07/2020. Covid-19 Pandemic (Coronavirus), Ireland, Lockdown Day 98 Day 04 of Phase three . Pictured Passengers at a near Empty Dublin Airport this morning as it opens again for travel with mixed advice whether to do so or not. Photo: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie"I wouldn’t have taken the chance if it was any other scenario, but my mother is very unwell, and I needed to get back to her as soon as I could," he said.
"The situation in Florida has gotten very bad. The number of cases plateaued in May, but once the businesses opened up again people started becoming much more complacent.
"We're now worse off than ever before which has left an awful lot of older people extremely worried about their safety."
Visitors are required to quarantine themselves for at least 14-days upon arrival in Ireland, and there have been some calls for those who don't adhere to the rule to be fined or even jailed.
Linda Dooley from San Francisco came to Ireland with her daughters Saoirse, four, and Emma, seven, to visit her family in Galway.
She admitted to being a little anxious about visiting but insists that her and her children are adhering to the rules.
"I was a little apprehensive coming over, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected," she said.
"We took all the precautions and made sure that everything we did was in accordance to the guidelines."
She continued: "The girls are off school for the summer months, so I felt it was a good time to come over to visit family
"We’re now going to spend two weeks self-isolating and take nothing for chance."
And Catholic priest Fr Michael Daly, from Chicago, felt that a one-month visit to Silverstream Priory in Co. Meath was too good to pass up.
"I will be staying at the monastery, not for family reasons, but because of my long desire to come here," he said.
"I’ll be adhering to all the rules and will be self-isolating, so I can’t see how my visit to Ireland could be deemed unsafe."
