Lootman wrote:Another piece of good news is that the government is finally considering doing away with the requirement for 10 days self-quarantine after arriving from an amber country, for those who are fully vaccinated.
It has been a constant source of frustration to me that, since being fully vaccinated in February 2021, there has been almost no credit for that. In fact I was only asked to show my card once and that was not for a travel-related purpose.
This relief could come in July which would enable many holidays to still take place. The requirement for tests would still remain but can be posted to your home and then posted back to the lab.
The chatter over the weekend was about not only removing quarantine restrictions after travel to amber countries for the fully vaccinated but also removing the requirement to self-isolate after coming into contact with an infected person. Understandably I suppose the media reports that I've seen in the last couple of days have concentrated on that, maybe because some minister hinted that the holiday bit at least was under serious consideration, but for me and maybe even for the wider UK society I am more excited about the latter.
I am now up to 1 NHS appointment and one other non-health appointment cancelled (that one I heard about yesterday) due to the (different) person I was supposed to be seeing having to self isolate after being contact traced. I've posted here before about my concerns that a third wave with another surge in case numbers would probably do severe damage to the NHS even in the absence of high numbers of hospitalisations and deaths. If, even with the current relatively low level of case numbers, we(*) are seeing this level of disruption think how much worse it could get if we were back to even half of the Dec/Jan peak. This rumoured change to quarantine protocols after being contact traced would pretty much remove that issue and allow NHS staff to avoid being snatched away into quarantine by a single phone call and instead stay at work to try and get down the already very long waiting lists.
Now if that second bit does happen then, particularly when it is an NHS front line worker being told "you've been in contact with an infected person but don't worry, you can still go into work today", I can understand why some people might be nervous but I do note that it isn't entirely letting people off the hook. As I understand it the proposals, for both travel returnees and people who have been contact traced, is essentially to replace physical quarantine with a kind of "chemical quarantine" (egregiously stretching the definition of the word quarantine in order to try and get to a pithy soundbite!) where the double-jabbed person needs to self-test every day for a certain number of days and if they test positive at any time they do then have to physically quarantine.
If the above happens it would be interesting to see the data that has informed that decision. I know that data is being collected about vaccine efficacy against even asymptomatic infection and also a clearer picture is I think beginning to emerge about the reduction in transmission for the double-vaccinated but I wonder if the thinking is now that, in addition to that, if someone is being tested daily then, depending on what test is used, on the day they first turn positive their viral load might be so low and the vaccine antibodies already going to work on that viral load such that they are unlikely to be a severe transmission risk for another day or so such that, if they are immediately told to isolate at that point, they never really become a transmission vector; the testing effectively quarantines them before they become infectious. If all that was true in terms of the data being solid then this would be a major quite safe step forwards towards normality and living with the virus and would definitely be another piece of "unashamed good news".
- Julian
(*) I say "We". I'm basing this on my own 2 personal anecdotes. Maybe I've just been very unlucky.
