zico wrote:...
Secondly, the FT is reporting that NHS staff may be exempt from self-isolating. The NHS staff whose actual job it is to care for the most vulnerable in society. Grateful if someone could explain how this makes any sense at all.
Project fear explanation - I heard a figure from someone from the NHS being interviewed on TV yesterday that even now about 20% of NHS staff are off work self isolating. Imagine how bad that will get if cases do grow to 50,000 let alone 100,000 or more cases a day. You can't care for the vulnerable if you're not at work.
Project hope explanation - They won't actually be exempt. As I understand it they will have to self isolate immediately upon recieving notice that they have been in contact with an infected person, for just as long as it takes them to get a test and if that is negative then, and only then, can they stop self-isolating. I'm not sure what sort of test will be required, with the general population after the 16th August relaxation of their self-isolation rules I'm reading/hearing that it will be lateral flow, but maybe for reasons related to your concerns it will be PCR for medical staff. Even with PCR, with appropriate prioritisation or even on-site hospital processing that brief period of isolation until the test result is received would I hope be less than 24 hours and maybe same day to make the determination that they are (currently) OK to continue working. If it's a lateral flow test it will be literally minutes to determine whether they are OK to return to work. And if they do test negative my understanding is that won't be a total reprieve, they will still be required to test daily for X number of days after they were contact traced and if they come up positive on any of those tests they then of course need to self isolate "properly". In a way it's a more aggressive form of the "test to release" 5 day test point that people can pay extra to do to get released from quarantine early when returning from an amber country.
Personally I think it's necessary and, assuming my understanding above is how it pans out, an appropriate balance of risk if the tests can be done as very fast turnaround PCR. I have personal experience of a hospital appointment being cancelled way back in April when cases were only about 2,000 a day because the consultant I was supposed to be seeing had been told to self-isolate and his secretary who called me 2 days before my appointment to cancel said they had no idea when he would be back at work. It ended up taking about 5 weeks, maybe even a bit longer I think, before my appointment was rescheduled for 27th May. Ironically I can type 27th May without looking it up because just an hour ago a letter came in the post which was the report from the consultant on my 27th May appointment telling me that as was agreed at my consultation I had now been put on the waiting list for surgery. So that's an over 6 week delay from consultation to even getting formally put on the waiting list. Presumably this huge delay in even processing the results of my hospital appointment is down to a combination of overload on top of staff shortages generating a massive backlog of paperwork and other back office processing. I really do think my "project fear" explanation on its own has considerable merit and "project hope" sufficiently reduces the risks that come with the relaxation of the rules.
- Julian