How should we manage COVID without regulations? Continue testing and stay home if positive

Changes to Australia’s isolation rules, which come into force on Friday 14 October, will remove the obligation to isolate people if they test positive for COVID.

Isolation requirements will remain for high-risk facilities such as aged care, disability care, Aboriginal health care and hospitals. Workers in these sectors who are unable to take paid leave while in isolation will still be able to access it financial supportbut pandemic benefits will not be available to the rest of the population.

(Casual workers without sick leave in other sectors, however, may be eligible for state government support. Victoria, for example, offers a guarantee of sick pay up to 38 hours of work lost due to illness.)

Although isolation will not be mandatory for most, it is still important to know about yourself infection take risks and be careful with others if you have or have tested positive for COVID respiratory symptoms.

Do you still need to check?

If you’re worried you’ve been exposed to someone with the virus or have started showing symptoms, it’s always best to know your COVID status. Ignoring it can put yourself and others at risk.

Knowing you are COVID-positive is particularly important for people who are at greater risk of serious infection because they are severely immunocompromised, over 50 (or over 30 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people) with two additional risk factors or people aged 70 years or older. A positive test allows people to enter these groups get access to antiviral drugs, which must be started within five days of the onset of symptoms.

Antiviral drugs can prevent the infection from developing into a serious illness or hospitalization. A A recent Israeli study of the antiviral drug Paxlovid was found to be effective in reducing the severity of COVID in people age 65 and older who were infected with omicrons. Hospitalization rates dropped from 58.9 per 100,000 observation days to 14.7. This is a four-fold decrease and is comparable to the indicators of young people.

If you are at risk and have symptoms, try to get a PCR test if possible, as it can detect infection earlier than a rapid antigen test (RAT).

I tested positive, so how long should I self-isolate?

The infectious period begins a day or two before symptoms appear and can last more than ten days. Over time, the viral load decreases, so you are less contagious.

The general advice used to be to isolate for up to 48 hours after symptoms have disappeared. But many infections may not have obvious symptoms, and some symptoms persist after infection, so monitoring should be done with RAT.

RATs work best a few days after infection. Therefore, although they may not pick up all infections initially, they can show whether you remain contagious at the time of infection.

Recent a US study mainly in young vaccinated people, concluded that for people with persistent mild symptoms, such as a persistent dry cough, a negative RAT can determine when it is safe to stop isolation. However, half of those who test positive for RAT are not infectious.

However, it is best to exercise caution when working in high-risk environments or dealing with people who are vulnerable to serious illnesses.

Isolate yourself while you have symptoms in the summer

Symptoms remain an important way to determine risk. As the cold and flu season progresses, there will be fewer other respiratory infections around. Therefore, a cough with fever is likely to be a sign of COVID and should be considered regardless of tests.

March 2022 Survey of Great Britain reported that 1,687 of the 6,260 infections, or just over a quarter of those with known symptoms, were in people without symptoms. Moreover, 1,343 people tested positive who had symptoms but did not have typical COVID symptoms. Thus, slightly less than half of the infections identified in this study may not have been recognized as COVID infections without testing.

Due to high vaccination rates and prior infection, a higher proportion of people with COVID can be asymptomatic rather than having characteristic symptoms.

Therefore, monitoring for COVID symptoms will not identify all infections. So be careful, especially when there are vulnerable people around

Masks work when the risk of Omicron infection is high

In the UK during delta and omicron waves BA.1, surveys randomly selected participants reported a 13–36% increase in infection rates in people who said they wore masks only sometimes (4.3%) or rarely (5.2%), compared to those who said they always wore masks (3.8%).

This gap narrowed after the omicron BA.1 peak, when the number of infections declined.

But masks do help reduce the risk of Omicron infection, especially when infection rates are high.

So if you’re in crowded indoor spaces, e.g public transportit is better to assume that the virus is present and mask it.

Why avoid contamination? Prolonged COVID can be debilitating

Although the situation has improved in terms of severe acute illness, minimizing the risk of infection remains important given the risk of prolonged COVID, which can be debilitating for some even after mild infections.

Among infections omicron 4.5% of 56,003 people experienced long covid. This compares to 10.8% of the 41,361 delta cases.

However, vaccination reduces the risk. Studies show that vaccinated people 60% less likely to develop long-term COVID than unvaccinated people and 70% less likely after a booster dose.

COVID is here to stay

The lifting of isolation mandates does not mean we are ignoring COVID or ending isolation or abandoning the risk we may pose to others. Individual and global risk management will require ongoing efforts.

Vaccines help reduce severe illness and prolonged COVID. But in connection with the increase in the number of infections abroad and the appearance of other subvariants of omicron, we need to think ahead.

It’s a long game now, so monitoring our exposure risk, being aware of our symptoms, testing if we suspect we’ve been exposed, and isolating if we need to will remain the best way to protect ourselves and those around us. .

This article is reprinted from Conversation under a Creative Commons license. To read original article.