Health Department suspends revised Covid-19 quarantine and contact tracing protocols

The health department has temporarily suspended recently announced revisions to Covid-19 contact tracing and quarantine protocols to allow for broader public consultation.

Under the revised provisions, the ministry had removed the requirement for contact tracing except in congregate settings or in the case of cluster outbreaks.

It also scrapped testing and isolation for those who had come into contact with Covid-19 cases but were asymptomatic, while those with mild illness were allowed to self-isolate for up to eight days and those with severe cases up to 10 days. .

The revisions came after recommendations from the Ministerial Covid-19 Advisory Committee to remove the quarantine and isolation requirement for asymptomatic contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19.

The committee said the proportion of people with some immunity to vaccination and/or previous infection was high, citing several seroprevalence surveys. He added that containment measures were no longer appropriate mainly due to the emergence of more infectious variants like Omicron.

The committee was also of the view that knowledge of the virus had evolved because there was a high proportion of asymptomatic illnesses, a high degree of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread, and only a small proportion of cases were being diagnosed.

In its latest statement, however, the health department said it was suspending implementation of the revised policy while considering additional comments and input received from stakeholders and the public.

This means the requirement for all Covid-19 contacts to self-quarantine for 10 days and existing quarantine and contact tracing regulations will remain in place for longer.

An amended circular will be reissued once the ministry completes accounting for the additional contribution, it said in a statement.