Test UK arrivals to cut Covid quarantine times, scientists urge | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/test-uk-arrivals-to-cut-covid-quarantine-times-scientists-urge
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A growing number of countries are being added to the UK’s quarantine lists, with many Britons holidaying in France forced to make a frantic dash back before 4am on Saturday morning to avoid a 14-day period of isolation.
Croatia, Turkey and Greece are also reporting rises in Covid cases, leading to speculation that they, too, could soon be added to the quarantine list.
But a number of studies have shown that testing can reduce quarantine time.Public Health England documents released by the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) last week showed that, with various assumptions such as tests working perfectly, testing travellers on arrival in the UK and five days into a seven-day quarantine prevents 85% of travellers who are asymptomatically infected or incubating illness from mixing freely and potentially introducing infections into the UK.
“There are several reasons for this; the isolation period of itself will ensure that a proportion of infected people pass through their illness and cease being infectious, and the testing regime adds safeguards for detection of asymptomatic and prolonged infections,” a PHE spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, a study by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that testing arrivals seven days into an eight-day quarantine period could cut the number of infectious people re-entering the community by 94%, compared with no testing or quarantine.
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