Israel is to ease its quarantine rules for Covid. Vaccinated or recovered people will have to take a PCR test immediately and isolate until a negative result. They're then asked to avoid "crowded places" for leisure and entertainment purposes for 10 days.
Until now, vaxxed people were exempt from exposure isolation... except for from Omicron. But with Omicron now likely the dominant variant, in reality thousands of vaxxed people were in 14 day quarantine (shortened to 7 days with a neg test on day 7).
I am sympathetic to shortening exposure quarantines or replacing them with rapid testing. But Israel's new policy doesn't make much sense. Day 1 is too early to expect a positive PCR from Omicron. And the 'crowded places' rule is unenforceable.
https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1475023808662802435
In reality, with high Omicron prevalence, vaccinated people might be forced into one-day exposure quarantine several times a WEEK, with people testing negative on day 1 and then potentially being infectious on day 3.
Seems to me like this new policy is "pandemic security theatre", making life complicated and confusing for some and dangerous and scary for others while doing close to nothing to help public health.
My sense is it's partly driven by a sense that Israelis would not accept millions of exposure quarantines for vaccinated people
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
