December 11, 2020

expert reaction to period of self-isolation for contacts of people with confirmed coronavirus to be shortened from 14 to 10 days across the UK from Monday

Starting from Monday 14 December, the self-isolation period for contacts of people with confirmed coronavirus will be reduced from 14 to 10 days across the UK.

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, UEA, said:

“In symptomatic COVID-19 infections, the average incubation period is about 5 to 6 days but there is a wide range.  In their review¹, McAloon and colleagues estimated that in people who became ill with COVID, about 10% developed their illness after 10 days and about 1 to 2% after 14 days.  So reducing the isolation period from 14 to 10 days would allow about 10% of cases to leave isolation and then still become ill over the next few days.  A rapid test at about day 9 would be expected to pick up some but far from all of these cases.

“However, there has been a lot of reporting recently suggesting that many people are unable or unwilling to self-isolate for the full 14 days.  It is plausible that if a reduction in the time leads to more people complying with the requirement to self-isolate then this change in advice could lead to fewer people being out in public when they become infectious, though I am personally not aware of any evidence to support this suggestion.”

1 McAloon C, Collins Á, Hunt K, Barber A, Byrne AW, Butler F, Casey M, Griffin J, Lane E, McEvoy D, Wall P. Incubation period of COVID-19: a rapid systematic review and meta-analysis of observational research. BMJ open. 2020 Aug 1;10(8):e039652

Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor of Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading, said:

“This is a welcome move by the government to reduce some of the burden on people who have been asked to self-isolate because they or members of their household have had a positive test.

“As our understanding of Covid-19 increases, we now know that people are at their most infectious in the first few days before developing symptoms and then for about 5 days afterwards.  The rules around 14 days of isolation were originally brought in back in the spring, when this was poorly understood and when there were effectively no tests available for people in the community.

“Almost a year on, the picture is very different.  It is clear that if you live with someone who has had a positive test, and you haven’t developed any symptoms after 10 days of self-isolating, then your chances of being infected are incredibly small.

“People still need to follow the rules, so it is vital the government only restricts people’s freedoms as much as is absolutely necessary – otherwise people will just ignore them, which leads to the worst of both worlds: that thousands of law-abiding but non-infectious households lock themselves away unnecessarily, while other potential super-spreaders may ignore isolation regulations altogether because they don’t believe the rules make sense.”

https://www.gov.scot/news/reduction-in-self-isolation/

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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