This is news that should delight those vaccinated. The government plans to lift the isolation of people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, designated contact cases, but tested negative, confirmed the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, at 13 Hours of TF1, this Wednesday.
“People who have had two doses until then had to isolate themselves. The analyzes carried out on these people show that they no longer have a chance of catching the disease, ”he explained. A measure announced Tuesday on RTL by Olivier Véran, the Minister of Health: “What could be acted on is that when you are fully vaccinated, you are no longer in contact when you have been in contact with a sick person ”, he said advancing that with a complete vaccination schedule,“ the risk of developing severe forms is much lower ”.
To understand this decision, 20 minutes asked Michaël Rochoy, general practitioner, researcher in epidemiology and member of the collective “On the side of science”.
Lifting the isolation of contact cases vaccinated, but tested negative, might it not increase contamination?
The complete vaccination schedule does not eliminate the risk of carrying or transmitting the virus, but it greatly reduces it. Simply put, if you are vaccinated you have your antibodies ready to jump, they can neutralize the virus before you get sick. It’s kind of a fight between your antibodies and the virus, which has less time to replicate, so you’re less contagious and you get forms that are less severe. Although no definitive study has been published, we now know that the vaccine limits contagion, being a carrier of the virus and having serious forms.
With the isolation of contact cases, there is a societal and economic stake. We must try to isolate as little as possible, that’s for sure. And then, you have to trust people. Yes, contact cases vaccinated, but tested negative, will no longer have to isolate themselves, but most are aware that it is necessary to remain vigilant for a few days. You don’t take your mask off at the movies and you don’t eat with 40 people, even if you’re negative.
Is this government strategy understandable?
It all depends on the authorities’ project. If the project is to limit transmission as much as possible, it is of course better to consider that people remain in contact. But if the goal is to encourage people to be vaccinated, to make an appointment on Doctolib, to show that one finds a normal life as soon as one is vaccinated, this measure is logical and it is rather what we are aiming for.
The problem is that to know if this is a good measure, it will already be necessary to know the acceptability thresholds, that is to say to define thresholds for mortality, occupancy of intensive care beds, contamination. daily. As long as we have not defined acceptability thresholds, we will not be fixed. Take the death toll from the coronavirus. Currently, there are only 30 deaths per day, which is 3 times less than the number of daily deaths from road accidents. If we consider that 30 deaths per day is acceptable, then the measures are acceptable, if we consider that it is not, we must not relax the measures and we must even take new ones. In the end, we discuss new measures, but without having an objective. So we are waiting for objectives that we have not set, that does not make sense.
Why has the isolation increased to ten days instead of the current seven?
It is a measure which adapts to the Delta variant. It is more transmissible, more contagious, so, quite logically, we increase the isolation to make it more effective. But these periods of isolation are still estimates. Some people are still contagious two weeks later, others are no longer contagious after three days. There, increasing to ten days, instead of the current seven, is risk reduction, but a risk that we are ready to take.
It is the same with the health pass. We consider that, if we are vaccinated or have a negative test, the risk is minimal and acceptable. Of course, there will always be people who will fall through the cracks, but this is the risk considered “acceptable” by the government.
Is the removal of the mask in places requiring the sanitary pass premature?
Masks are not the same. For places where it is now possible to remove your mask, you must either present a complete vaccination schedule or a PCR test. But with the PCR test, there is a greater chance of having infected people. We are talking about closed places. If you take off your mask at the cinema, it will be dramatic, entire cinemas will be contaminated without understanding anything, it’s a very bad idea. As much the question of isolation is very personal, so much that of the mask in a closed place, it is collective, it affects crowds.