Reported plans to allow double-jabbed to skip self-isolation could harm compliance
Ministers reported plans to allow those who have been double vaccinated to skip self-isolation if they come into contact with someone with coronavirus risk breeding public resentment and undermining compliance, a government adviser has warned.
Robert West, professor in health psychology at University College London’s Institute of Epidemiology and Health, told Times Radio he could see the rationale for the policy, but added: There are significant problems with it and at the moment those problems outweigh potential benefits.
Prof West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
When you get unfairness in situations like this, you get resentment and when you get resentment you can get loss of compliance, he said, adding that the only possible scenariowhere the policy might work was a long way down the line when everyone has been offered a second dose.
But Dr Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer in communicable diseases at the University of Exeters medical school, said he thought the plans were perfectly okay.
The gold standard would be to be cautious even if you have been immunised twice – in other words, fully immunised, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.
However, as a measured action going forward I think it is okay and my reasons are as follows: an immunised person is less infectious and furthermore the testing of people who are in quarantine isolating is pretty inaccurate, so balancing both, I think it is perfectly okay.
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