Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy on South Africa. We must pay tribute to the South African authorities for the honesty, transparency and speed with which they have responded to Omicron.

They should not be punished. We have to develop mechanisms to support countries that identify very quickly and in a transparent way such variants. The Omicron variant is likely to be in this country. There are now a number of cases on which work will have to be done to identify and to confirm whether or not they are Omicron. They could have been right throughout November or indeed in October and there is a look back going on now in terms of people who have travelled in from various locations. There are cases emerging all over Europe, at very low levels it must be said. Delta is the predominant variant here. On the last occasion, with Alpha and so on, we enhanced genomic sequencing capacity here. I will get the details for the Deputy.

The European Union has been the best continent so far in exporting vaccines to over 150 countries.

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