People arriving from US, Canada and France have to stay in a quarantine hotel for up to 2 weeks

They're among 16 countries that were added to the list this morning.

However people who're fully vaccinated could soon be exempt under measures being considered by government.

It comes as the booking system for hotel quarantine remains suspended due to a lack of available beds

Associate Professor at UCD and member of the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group, Julien Mercille, says placing more countries on the list is a positive step:

"If you had more countries and more countries, at least what you're doing is that you're slowing down the importation of cases and variants, especially the variants. If you have new variants coming in in greater numbers than it could really spread like wildfire."