[ad_1]
Allowing those who have received two doses of a Covid vaccine to skip quarantine could engender resentment and lead to massive non-compliance, a science adviser has warned.
Robert West, professor of health psychology at the Institute of Epidemiology and Health at University College London, told Times Radio he could “see the rationale” for the policy, but there was had significant issues that “outweigh the potential benefits.”
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviors, which advises Sage, was speaking following reports that the government is proposing to drop all legal requirements, including self-isolation, for people fully vaccinated who come in contact with someone who is infected.
A Covid operations committee meeting will take place on Monday during which ministers are expected to sign a plan that will mean fully vaccinated people will be asked to take daily tests but will not be required to do so.
West said: “The bigger problem is if you find yourself in a situation where not everyone has even received the vaccine, you clearly have a huge injustice already.
“When you feel injustice in situations like this you feel resentment and when you feel resentment you can lose conformity.”
West added that “the only possible scenario” where the policy might work was “a long way down” when everyone was offered a double vaccine.
However, Dr Bharat Pankhania, Clinical Lecturer in Communicable Diseases at the University of Exeter School of Medicine, said he thought it was “perfectly acceptable” for people who had received two doses of the drug. ‘coronavirus vaccine to be exempted from quarantine measures.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today show: “The gold standard would be to be careful even if you’ve been immunized twice – in other words, completely immune.
“However, as a measured action going forward, I think everything is fine and my reasons are as follows: an immune person is less contagious and furthermore, the testing of people in quarantine is quite inaccurate. So balancing the two, I think that’s perfectly OK.
When asked if he thinks vaccines have broken the link between infections, hospitalizations and deaths, he replied, “You are absolutely right, we are now noticing that even though the number of cases has gone downhill. increased, a proportionately similar increase in the number of hospitalizations and no deaths has occurred and therefore we believe that vaccines work and that they work very well in preventing people from entering intensive care, ventilators and the hospital. dead.
“Therefore, after decoupling that, we can also start to think about other decoupling measures, such as not quarantining after being fully immunized.”
Epidemiologist Professor Christophe Fraser, who advised the Health Department on testing and traceability, said a “halfway” proposal could be that those who received both injections be tested every day. days instead of undertaking a quarantine period.
West warned infection rates were “getting out of hand” and the discussion was “a bit of a distraction” in the face of the growing number of cases.
“The hope is that, of course, it won’t reach the levels we saw in January, but it doesn’t have to be, because the NHS has already been hit so hard and the staff are so stressed out now,” did he declare. .
“We have to catch up with the routine [treatments], so it wouldn’t take long for the NHS to be very badly affected. “
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that around one in 260 people in private households in England had Covid in the week leading up to June 26 – up from one in 440 the previous week and the highest level from the week until February 27.
Source link
