Is this right?

[Bbq1]

A medical professional yesterday told me the following about Coronaviris and self isolating...if I were to come into contact with somebody, through work, who has a relative living in their household with Covid i do not have to self isolate and can continue to work. If that person with the relative with Covid develops it then I will self isolate for 14 days because I have been in direct contact with an infected person. The bit I really struggle with is they then said that while I self isolate my son and husband can continue to go to school and work as normal! Surely that can't be right? Because if I turned out to have it and them from me they would be spreading it through school, work and the community? Or is only if I have symptoms that they would isolate too? I am totally confused.

Yes its only if you get symptoms within your isolation period that the rest of the family would isolate (unless you're in a locally locked down area in which case the whole family may have to isolate too)

its the same if a child gets sent home to isolate due to contact with a case in school - its only the child that isolates, not the rest of the family

As soon as a person develops symptoms their household has to isolate. So you should not have have contact with the person at work after that point, and they’d have been ‘out of circulation’ by the time the person in that household got the positive test.
You would not have to do anything unless the individual you had contact with developed symptoms followed by a positive test, you would only need to isolate then if the contact you had with them was close contact within 48 hours of the symptoms developing. If that all happened the rest of your household would not have to isolate unless you then developed symptoms.
It’s about minimising risks, not eliminating them entirely. Although, if I had had close contact with an individual and then discovered someone they loved with developed Covid I would be cautious for the next couple of weeks as a precaution.