Have self isolation rules changed.

[Foobydoo]

My brother works for a small firm of less than ten people in a building type trade. Two people have tested positive and they sent everyone home. His boss has told everyone they need to get tested and he is hoping to reopen on Friday depending on results.
Is this correct? In our area you can only test with symptoms but in his work area you can test for any reason. He doesn't get sick pay or anything in his job.

No its not right. A negative test doesn't release from 10 days isolation unless they do daily testing to see if it turns positive down the line.

No, it’s not correct, my son had the same situation where he worked. The firm sent everyone a private test and expected those that were negative to return to work after test, but my son rang 119 and was told he had to isolate for the full 14 days (now 10 days). Firm were not happy, but everybody stayed off and another 5 were positive without any symptoms, so it was just as well, as they could have passed it on without knowing.

You can absolutely have a negative test after being exposed and then go on to have symptoms and be positive. It happened to both DH and I.

Getting a test before you have symptoms is just false reassurance and not accurate at all. It's a waste of time and no-one should be doing it as it doesn't mean anything or change anything. You still have to isolate.

When I had it (from work) DH symptoms started right at the end of the 10 day isolation and his first test was negative but he still had typical symptoms a week after so tested again and was positive.

I would bet more of his co-workers go down with it if it's the new variant. Nearly everyone is getting it in outbreaks at our work. No-one is getting away with it.

No that’s not correct. BUT was he a close contact (2m for 15 mins or 1m for a min without masks?) if not then actually there’s no need to isolate.

But remember its a cumulative 15 minutes so a few minutes here and there can add up to it

It is so difficult, he has a good relationship with his boss but it worried about how to handle this now.
It doesn't help that test and trace are so rubbish. He did have the app on so he may get something from that although not everyone uses it.

Are they indoors or outdoors?

Has he had any contact with the people who have tested positive?

We’ve had situations where we’ve identified our employees could be at risk even though it doesn’t meet the public health definition of contact, and have paid for private testing 5 days after potential exposure for added peace of mind. For example, in one situation we had a team in a building in which a lot of people later tested positive. There was no direct contact at all, but we worried about them picking it up from surfaces so played it safe anyway.

He has had limited face to face contact as they try to keep a distance but they all answer the phones, share vans, toilets, kette, work keys etc.

I get why you'd do that SockMonster but I do think it's basically still false reassurance

You have 2 choices really

• safest choice is everyone stay home for 10 days regardless
• hard line choice is you apply the rules re: contact very strictly and those who had an official contact are off for 10 days whereas those who didn't are in straight away.

A test at 5 days will reduce the risk I guess but it will not eliminate it and people should not think or act as though it does.

Tbh the test still has a pretty high false negative rate and DH and I plus a number of colleagues have had negative initial tests despite symptoms and then going on to have positive COVID tests.

I therefore think that if there's a high probability ie high risk contact and typical symptoms with no other explanation it's still more likely than not to be COVID and people should stay off and get another test. In all cases where I recommended that the 2nd test was positive.

It's all a weigh up essentially and people need to be less hung up on just the test result itself. It's the context too. There was no way I was believing DH would be negative with a headache fever and cough after sharing a bed with me when I was infected. So he got another test. Positive.

From an employer POV surely it's a nightmare to have a full on outbreak and maybe sending them all home for 10 days especially if there's anything they can do at home would be better than them all off sick for weeks. At least 2 or 3 weeks off for everyone I've known with it even mildly.

Two of the lads have been for lateral flow tests today and are negative so the boss is looking to reopen Friday. We cannot get them in our area yet so boss has asked my brother to lie and say he has symptoms. He is being quite funny about it. My brother hasn't decided what to do yet, he won't get paid if he doesn't go in he could probably manage financially but obviously doesn't want to risk his job in the long term.

@CovoidOfAllHumanity in our case we couldn’t afford to pay everyone to be off for 10 days as there was no actual contact so we would be unable to reclaim any of if as sick pay from HMRC (which is how self isolation and time off with covid is processed). We only started the business in 2019 and are only just managing to keep our heads above water and keep everyone employed.

Not one person had any contact at all with anyone who tested positive, although they had checked in at the same security lodge the positive people would have and used the same toilets and public spaces. Obviously normal covid isolation rules would have applied if they had had actual contact. We work closely with a company in a European country who isolate 1 week, test then return to work which is where we got the idea. It seemed a good middle ground between carrying on as usual and risking everyone’s jobs by paying people 10 days off that we would not get any HMRC reimbursement for.

It’s a good point that testing may give people a false sense of security though. Should we find ourselves in a similar situation we’d have to consider if it’s actually safer to carry on as usual but with everyone super alert to the fact that they might be incubating it. I suppose that, human behaviour being what it is, this may actually be safer.

No easy answers!