Since Sunday, the police have sought a group of four suspected of breaking quarantine regulations on arrival in Iceland, RÚV reports. The people left the country yesterday. Chief Epidemiologist Þórólfur Guðnason will turn in new suggestions for border regulations in the next few days, with the goal of making sure infections don’t cross the border.
One American and three Europeans sat at a restaurant in the Reykjavík city centre last Sunday. The restaurant’s employee heard them discussing that they weren’t following quarantine regulations and notified the police. Deputy chief superintendent Jóhann Karl Þórisson stated that the men had left when the police arrived but that the contact tracing team gave police information on their presumed residence.
Police officers visited the men’s residence, but they weren’t there. It was later discovered that the men were working for a company, and were sent away from Iceland once management discovered their behaviour during the time they should have been in quarantine.
“This is serious. We have these rules and we mean for people to follow them. We’re really trusting people to do so. If people are deliberately breaking the rules, the police have to interfere,” Jóhann Karl told RÚV.
Iceland currently has low domestic infection rates and medical authorities are working on relaxing restrictions. In order for people in Iceland to be able to relax, border restrictions must be respected. Chief Epidemiologist Þórólfur Guðnason is currently working on suggestions for the Minister of Health on how to possibly secure the border further. In an information briefing this week, Þórólfur discussed the possibilities they were considering. “We can enforce certain procedures more rigidly and verify information provided to us by travellers, such as phone numbers and addresses of quarantine residences. We can also request negative PCR tests at points of departure as many other European countries are doing. Finally, if we doubt people intend to respect quarantine regulations, we can mandate that they spend quarantine in the government’s quarantine hotels.”
