People who test positive for covid will no longer be legally required to self-isolate under the Prime Minister’s ‘living with covid’ plan.
Boris Johnson is expected to repeal all pandemic regulations in England when he sets out his vision for the future in an announcement on Monday.
It means that by the end of the week, self-isolation regulations for those who test positive and their close contacts will be lifted.
Free lateral flow tests are also expected to be eliminated.
However, the plans have generated clear divisions among politicians and public health experts, who believe the move is premature.
Why are some scientists worried?
Many people are concerned that the removal of self-isolation rules will lead to an increase in Covid cases.
Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick and a member of the Pandemic Influenza Scientific Modeling (Spi-M) group, said: “The concern, of course, is removing testing, removing self-isolation, which can cause a big problem”. behavior change”.
Tildesley said one of her biggest concerns was support for people with low-income jobs to self-isolate and that there was a “real concern” that scrapping the rules would lead to more workplace infections.
Chang Nagpaul, president of the British Medical Association, said removing self-isolation rules could result in millions of people contracting Long Covid.
He warned: “Living with Covid does not mean ignoring its ongoing harm for many, and it must not result in the removal of protections for some of the most vulnerable in our society.
“Removing all restrictions and allowing the infection to spread unchecked and unfettered would be detrimental to the health of millions, including those suffering from Long Covid symptoms.”
The vast majority, or 79 per cent, of top healthcare providers surveyed by the NHS Confederation disagreed with the plan to stop free access to Covid tests for the public.
Matthew Taylor, the body’s executive director, said now was “not the time to take risks” and that testing and self-isolation would allow us “hopefully to continue to come out of this pandemic without taking unnecessary risks.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s special envoy on Covid has also criticized the move.
“What we know about this virus is that it’s not good for people and just treating it like it’s a harmless virus, we think, I and my colleagues at the World Health Organization think it’s unwise,” he told BBC Radio. . 4’s Today Program.
Has any scientist supported the measure?
Professor Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia Norwich Medical School was less skeptical than other experts about the timing of the plans.
He said “we are kind of getting to that point, as the number of reported cases has gone down,” but added that it was still a “gamble.”
Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, told Sky News he was “optimistic” that a change in legal requirements would not lead to a drastic change in public attitudes towards Covid.
He said the fact that people were more cautious and careful than anticipated was “one of the reasons why we haven’t seen major resurgences so far since restrictions were lifted.”
The professor added: “I think this behavior change we’ve been talking about will be one of them. The only note of caution I’d like to add is that actually throughout this pandemic, predicting what people are going to do has proven to be quite difficult.”
Noting that people have been proactive in getting tested without authorized compulsion, he said: “I strongly suspect that those who are willing to get tested are also prepared to modify their behaviors should they test positive.
“So I hope again that the change in legal requirements… does not lead to a drastic change in the behavior of the whole society. I’m optimistic about it.”
What has the government said?
Ministers say any new emerging variants of the virus are expected to follow a pattern comparable to Omicron in being milder than previous Covid mutations.
Before outlining his plan, Johnson said: “Covid will not suddenly go away, and we must learn to live with this virus and continue to protect ourselves without restricting our freedoms.
“We have built strong protections against this virus over the last two years through vaccine launches, testing, new treatments, and the best scientific understanding of what this virus can do.
“Thanks to our successful vaccination program and the large number of people who have come forward to be vaccinated, we are now in a position to set out our plan for living with Covid this week.”
Downing Street said that pharmaceutical interventions “will continue to be our first line of defence”, and that the vaccine program will remain “open to anyone who has not yet come forward”.
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