Legal Affairs Correspondent
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has announced that Israel, as well as Albania and St Lucia, will no longer be designated states under the system of mandatory hotel quarantine.
People who have arrived from those countries in recent days can leave their hotels and quarantine at home.
In a statement last night, Mr Donnelly said that because of the substantially improved epidemiological situation in these countries, arrangements had been made on an exceptional basis for the small number of people who had arrived from these states in recent days and had not been in any other designated state in the 14 days before they arrived, to leave mandatory hotel quarantine as soon as they wished.
Two cases taken by a man and a woman who were each challenging the legality of making them quarantine in a hotel after arriving from Israel, have been struck out at the High Court.