Row brewing in Ireland over school rules for vaccinated children; Japan is reportedly set to extend it state of emergency in Tokyo and other regions
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Such calls have been echoed by the British Medical Association (BMA) which says it would “strongly urge” people to continue to take “sensible precautions” in the wake of self-isolation rules being eased for the fully vaccinated.
The body also said healthcare workers who want to self-isolate “should not be penalised in any way for doing so”. Double vaccinated health and social care staff who are close contacts of cases must have a negative PCR test and daily lateral flow tests will also need to be taken for 10 days as a precaution.
Dr Penelope Toff, BMA public health medicine committee co-chair, said:
We remain in a very precarious situation with Covid-19. Being fully vaccinated significantly reduces the chance of being infected, but it does not totally eliminate it so we strongly urge the public to remain cautious and take sensible precautions, such as taking a PCR test if in close contact with a positive case.
Fully vaccinated people, who are no longer required to self-isolate in the UK after being a close contact of someone with Covid-19, should be told it is “absolutely vital” to get a PCR test, an academic has said.
Prof Stephen Reicher, from the University of St Andrews and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) which advises the government, told Sky News the vaccines are “not perfect”, adding:
You can still be hospitalised, you can still get infected, you can still infect others. So I think it’s really important to say to people that having a PCR test is absolutely vital – it should be more than just ‘Do it if you want to do it’. And what’s more, I think it would have made sense to ask people to self-isolate until they get the results of that test, but at the very least be cautious.
The problem is that if you now make it a choice [for] people as to whether to take a test, and therefore have to self-isolate if you’re positive, people aren’t going to take that test if they can’t afford to be positive. So we need to give people more support, so they can self-isolate.