Cork mad to fly again
Cork is close to bursting point with “pent-up” demand for overseas holidays despite growing concern around the Delta variant of Covid-19.
That’s according to Marketing Manager at Topflight Cork Michelle Anderson who says the implementation of the EU Digital Covid Certificate (DCC) on 19 July is hugely welcome but may come with some “teething problems”. Ms Anderson told the Cork Independent she is confident that the system, which has been in place in every other EU country since 1 July, will be successful in Ireland.
“Essentially, this system means that if you are fully vaccinated and in possession of your DCC, then you will face no restrictions, quarantine or testing to travel within the EU. This is a hugely welcome development for our customers who are looking forward to upcoming holidays,” she said. Ms Anderson said Topflight has experienced an increase in enquiries and bookings over the last few weeks and that many customers are eager to “treat themselves” with high-end holidays.
“There is strong demand for four and five-star hotel options and many clients opting for a 14 night holiday. The majority of bookings are for August, September and October.”
“However, there are also bookings for the end of July. Some people just want to get away at the first opportunity!” she said.
The DCC provides digital proof that the holder has been vaccinated against Covid-19, has received a negative test result or has recovered from Covid-19.
The certificate will contain the holder’s name, date of birth, date of issue and information regarding their Covid vaccination, testing or recovery.
Each certificate will be identified by a unique identifier number and will feature a QR code to avoid fraud.
According to Cork city-based Stephen James (not his real name) who flies regularly through his employment at a large multinational technology company, the DCC is good for vaccinated people, but is “a bit crazy” for those who aren’t.
“If you’re not vaccinated, it’s still good to be able to travel, but how many PCR tests would you have to do? If I went to Germany, London and Italy as I would commonly do in a week, that is three to six PCR tests in a week at €100 a test,” he said.
Mr James, who is recently vaccinated, said the only “headache” from his point of view is the uncertainty of what will come next.
“How long does this last? Do we have to update it every time we get a vaccine? Overall it’s a fine idea to resume travel and get life starting to come back to normal but overall, hopefully it’s a short term plan to bring back long term normality,” he said.
Addressing the nation recently, An Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the new delta variant is far more transmissible and that the country is now in a race between the new variant and the vaccines.
His comments came shortly after the Government received a number of “stark” warnings from NPHET predicting the possibility of hundreds of thousands of infections between July and September with up to 2,000 deaths.
According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) most recent report, last week saw the number of new cases increased slightly, while the number of new deaths continued to decrease, with over 2.6 million new cases and just under 54,000 new deaths reported globally.
Latest figures from the Irish Government’s Covid-19 data hub report that 2,613,558 first dose vaccines and 1,873,441 second dose vaccines have been administered so far in Ireland.