Told not to self-isolate despite close contact at work? Am I wrong?

[Redandblu]

Changed name for this.

I work in the NHS.
A staff member came into work for the day, mentioned to someone at lunchtime that she had been to see family (at family home) a few days ago and one had tested positive now. Everyone questioned why she had come in and she was sent home.
She had a test, I'm not sure why as not symptomatic, not sure if instigated by her or manager, it's positive.
She has sat next to people, used computers and had lunch in the tea room. I spoke to her and sat with her at lunch.
A lot of us are not able to keep 1 meter at all times due to space and the tea room is a small windowless room.
All the department have been told by manager no testing required and no need to self isolating for anyone but her.
We are not in a lockdown area at the moment.

Am I missing something? I thought close contacts need to self isolate for 2 weeks? Or is it not because it's NHS and we all were wearing masks?

@BBCONEANDTWO

Our work have all been tested this week, as part of some government initiative. So far 5% have been found to be positive (obviously asymptomatic). Plus the test is only 70% accurate, so 30% could be wrongly negative!

NHS rules are no need to SI if both workers are in PPE or 2m distanced. We are in PPE all day except lunch when we make sure we are distanced. TBH I think you ought to be isolating if you were in contact with no masks and contact was less than 2m for more than 15 minutes.

I thought they all isolated if it was a primary class, but only those in close contact (Eg based on seating arrangements etc) if secondary?

Public Health England make the decision as to how many children have to isolate.

We have told that healthcare workers in general won’t be told to isolate unless we show symptoms
The ppe we wear should be sufficient
Apparently

but surely you should have been follwoing COVID secure guidelines? ie 2M apart or wearing masks when not.In which case there wont be any need to isolate. I am NHS . Where we work we can only have 3 people in the kitchen for lunch at one time to ensure adequate distancing without masks. Masks on at all other times when need to be closer than 2M. There was one instance where one worker had to SI after being closer than 2 M to another worker (who then tested positive)on a break without PPE. That did not go down well and we all got reminder emails about ensuring we remained COVID secure for exactly this reason.

We’ve had the same where I work (education) this week. Just seems wrong to me.

Sounds very similar to education. We're not even being told who tested positive (regardless of whether it's a staff member or student/s) so have no way of knowing if we were in close contact.

I think the 'stay 2m away from students if possible' is being taken to mean we're never close contacts even though it's virtually impossible for us to be distanced.

Obviously it's worrying but with zero choice you become somewhat numb to the risks as a defence against anxiety I think

I've been contacted by my daughters college (she's Y12) to say that someone has tested positive in one of her classes and she's not allowed back in for 14 days.
We're going down the road of she needs to follow the SI rules for the 14 days but the guidance says you only need to SI if contacted by track & trace, which she hasn't been.
No way of knowing if she's even been in contact with the person as it looks like they've contacted the whole class.

@TheHoneyBadger

Sounds very similar to education. We're not even being told who tested positive (regardless of whether it's a staff member or student/s) so have no way of knowing if we were in close contact.

I think the 'stay 2m away from students if possible' is being taken to mean we're never close contacts even though it's virtually impossible for us to be distanced.

Obviously it's worrying but with zero choice you become somewhat numb to the risks as a defence against anxiety I think

It was the same with us (nhs), we were never told if staff had tested positive, so had no way of knowing if we had been in close contact or not. Especially in the earlier days when ppe was only allowed when patient facing, not in other work areas.

They are making economic decisions not purely medical. In Melbourne, Australia, our numbers are low enough that now close contacts of close contacts have to isolate and get tested. And the last case of someone spreading from Melbourne to regional Victoria would have been prevented if they had implemented that earlier. With the numbers you have in the UK that would effectively put most of the country into isolation and require them to test.