Reduce the quarantine to 5 days for those who are positive for Covid and have no symptoms with the abolition also of the obligation to take a swab at the end of the five days. Here is the last frontier of the Covid rules on which the Government and the Regions are discussing thickly. The CTS is against it and even the Government is cautious for now despite the strong pressure of the Regions who are asking to cut the bureaucracy that now weighs down the rules of Covid. Among other things, this measure is already applied abroad and in particular in the USA. And with the Omicron variant, less aggressive on vaccinated, now dominant the knot will sooner or later have to be solved
The pressing of the Governors
To ask for a radical change of rules were above all the governors struggling with the chaos of tampons and certificates of healing that exploded with the exponential growth of infections that are now around 200 thousand cases a day. Among these also the president of Lazio Nicola Zingaretti who wrote a letter in the Corriere della Sera asking to «simplify. The condition for mass and convinced adherence to the rules is also simplicity ». To facilitate de-bureaucracy, Zingaretti proposes to the CTS to evaluate three measures: to stop self-surveillance in the event of close contact with Covid positives without having to swab after 5 days; consider whether it is possible, as in the US, to allow asymptomatic positives to be free to leave the house after 5 days of quarantine, even without a tampon and certificate of recovery; avoid suspension of the green pass for asymptomatic positives who have completed the vaccination cycle, maintaining the five-day quarantine recommendation.
The virologist Clementi: with Omicron rules to change
The example is favorable to a change of course virologist Massimo Clementi: «In the American style one could say in the positive: if you have no symptoms, stay at home for 5 days and then go out, obviously with the Ffp2 mask. Because that’s how it works with Omicron. And Delta is almost gone. We hardly see this variant that has been dominant now, if not sporadic cases ». For the expert, the tampon strategy should also be reviewed. For example, in schools, does the T0-T5 scheme (buffer on day 0 and day 5) make sense in the case of a positive pupil in a class? «I ask: after the swab is done, what happens? Nothing – he observes – It can be useful at the family unit level, if I have a child who lives with other adults and the family wants to know if it becomes infected because it can infect others. But this abuse of tampons which does not follow a trace, because it cannot follow a trace now with these numbers, I consider it nonsense ».
CTS and ISS opposed, the prudent Government
“The definition of a surveillance case must contain the positives, and not only the cases with more indicative symptoms of Covid-19 (respiratory symptoms, high fever, altered taste and smell, etc.)”, this is the position of theHigher Institute of Health expressed in recent days. «Experience has shown – reads the note from the ISS – that most infections, particularly in vaccinated subjects, proceed asymptomatically or with very nuanced symptoms. Not monitoring these cases would limit our ability to identify the emerging variants, their characteristics, and we would not be able to know the clinical status that follows the infection in the different populations (for example by age, vaccination status, comorbidities). Furthermore, it would not make it possible to monitor the trend of the circulation of the virus over time and, consequently, the risks of a detrimental impact on the ability to maintain adequate levels of health care even for diseases other than Covid-19 “. The CTS is also holding back on this hypothesis and the Government has postponed the dossier to the next few weeks, even if the knot will have to be solved sooner or later