Isolation notice - ineffective.

[MrDarcysMa]

So I got a notification telling me to isolate for 4 days. The contact had been 6 days earlier. I've not been flouting the rules but I had been to my
Work place (necessary) prepared an Xmas dinner for an elderly neighbour so handled his food. I'd also been to the GP, pharmacy and supermarket. Always wearing a mask but others there weren't.
It's really taught me a lesson, worrying that I could have spread it in those few days!
I felt I should warn those I'd been in contact with so I asked my gp if I should get a test and she said not if I have no symptoms - but aren't people asymptomatic? So how can the T&T work if so many people are asymptomatic ?

T&T isn't really fit for purpose if they cannot get test results back fast enough for people to isolate for the full amount of time.

No you don't get a test unless you get symptoms

Defo doesn't sound fit for purpose 🥴 what a shame.

Surly it's best to get a test if you have been in contact with someone positive as you maybe asymptomatic and then spread it?.... Isolate for the 10 days and get a test to be on the safe side??

T&T is only really effective if the virus is at low levels in society such that people who have had close contact with a covid case are significantly more likely to have covid than people who haven't.

There was a study from Singapore published in the Lancet where of 7700 close contacts identified (using a similar classification to ours) 188 of those contacts tested positive, a rate of 2.4%. That included household contacts for whom the positivity rate was much higher. The positivity rate for non-household contacts was around 1.3%.

The last estimate I saw for prevalence in the UK was 1 in 65 which is 1.5%. It's probably higher now.

So at the moment you are probably no more likely to have covid if you have been identified as a close contact by T&T than if you haven't. Clearly, individual risk varies depending on where you live and what you have been doing.

I think Germany has given up on close contact tracing now for that reason. We should probably do the same and repurpose T&T to do something more useful like booking vaccine appointments etc. That would free up people, particularly NHS staff and other key workers from self-isolating all the time. I suspect that it politically infeasible though.

Was it the app or test and trace? One of those is valid and the other is a pile of wank.

A friend of mine got a notification to isolate - 2.75 hours before it expired via the app 🤦🏼‍♀️

@gamerchick

Was it the app or test and trace? One of those is valid and the other is a pile of wank.

It was the nhs app - I thought that was test & trace?

@cosmicbabe

Surly it's best to get a test if you have been in contact with someone positive as you maybe asymptomatic and then spread it?.... Isolate for the 10 days and get a test to be on the safe side??

Nope, they say isolate abs only get tested if you have symptoms. Looked into ordering a test via the app but you have to input that you had symptoms which I didn't and I would have had to start the isolation again.

I spoke to my gp on phone about another matter and asked about a test- she said don't waste resources if had no symptoms and just isolate as instructed by the app.
So it's not accounting for asymptomatic people I guess. Unless the 10 days isolation is enough to stop it spreading anyway even if you do have it ?