I've always found it very unhelpful that 'self-isolation' is used to refer to both isolation and quarantine, but the distinction is now becoming increasingly important... 1/
To recap, isolation is for people who are confirmed to be infected; quarantine is for people who currently seem healthy but may be infected. A stay-at-home order is basically a large, untargeted quarantine (some countries even call it 'community quarantine'). 2/
As vaccines reduce infections/transmission, countries are re-evaluating approaches to disruptive quarantine, whether for travellers or contacts of cases (e.g. in US: cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…). However, we need to be careful about jumbling isolation and quarantine together... 3/
Getting tested & isolating and when you have symptoms is one of biggest ways to reduce overall transmission. If done well, it's one of the most efficient, because it's targeted only at people known to have the virus. And crucially, it can flag emergence of new variants. 4/
If the message becomes 'fully vaccinated people don't need to self-isolate', there's a real risk that we'll see a notable increase in transmission - and lose vital situational awareness about variants - in the confusion between isolation and quarantine. 5/5
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