ARCHIVED - Spain considering shortening quarantine to ten days

The same debate is underway in Germany where the possibility of reducing the quarantine period to between 5 and 7 days is also under consideration

The director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES), Fernando Simón, has confirmed that the Spanish Ministry of Health is studying the possibility of reducing the covid quarantine period from 14 to to 10 days.

Currently, the protocols designed by the Ministry of Health establish that all positive cases of coronavirus must remain in isolation for 14 days, but as the pandemic progresses, and more is understood about how the virus behaves, the attitude towards a 14 day quarantine is changing.

Last week German Virologist Christian Drosten raised the subject of shortening the quarantine period in Germany from 14 to 5 days. Drosten bases his recommendation on his research which demonstrates that "the contagious period begins two days before the appearance of symptoms and ends, if we look at it realistically, four or five days later", so that in five days the infection would have finished.

The virologist and his colleagues undertook studies during the first months of the pandemic in which they established that “when they repeatedly took samples from the throat of the patients and examined the components of the virus they contained, they found that these particles soon lost their virulence: if you wanted to grow them in the laboratory in an infectious virus, they were often successful. After a week, not anymore.”

Fernando Simón, who effectively is the Spanish counterpart of Christian Drosten, feels that a 10 day quarantine would be a more realistic prospect, his point of view being that if, 10 days after diagnosis, a PCR test is negative and the patient has been without symptoms for three days, then the quarantine can be lifted.

He also believes that in the eventuality that a patient is asymptomatic, and a PCR test yields a negative result after ten days, then quarantine could be cut to ten days.

For the isolation shortening to be effective, a PCR test should be performed after five days in order to be able to verify for sure if the infection is still in the individual's body.

If negative, isolations of entire school classes and workplaces could be avoided.

In this regard, the director of the CCAES has explained that when these types of decisions are to be made, several approaches have to be put on the table:

"Leaving the 14 days of quarantine rule is a big decision and getting it wrong is a big worry. If we assess the scientific evidence, we know that from days 8, 9 and 10, especially 10, onwards, the viral load is already very low and most people are no longer infectious. And then we can take some risk. If we know that from the fifth or seventh day, they can remain infectious, albeit in a very few cases, we have to assess how much that excess risk implies. ”

“ In Spain we are currently evaluating reducing the quarantine period from 14 to 10 days. Lowering to 5 or 7 will take more time. You have to assess the scientific evidence and make careful decisions so as not to take a step backwards. "

However, it’s not just a question of scientific risk, but also has immense economic and social implications.

The possibility that school classes may have to be quarantined involves a large number of people, not just the students, but also their parents, who must take time off to work to quarantine with them and then, their families as well. The cost to business of quarantine in the next few months will run into billions and as the cost of financing covid continues to rise for the government which will ultimately be left to bear much of the cost of those who are not working for one reason or another, the decision has significant implications.

Another issue to take into consideration is the fact that many of those who should be quarantining fail to do so and those monitoring patients telephonically who should be quarantining report that this is not happening. An article published in Murcia on Tuesday indicated that up to 60% of those who should be quarantining are failing to do so, citing the economic cost and impracticality of maintaining such a long quarantine and balancing work and family commitments at the same time.