I'm confused by this guidance

[november90]

I can't attach the pic but it says "all suspected New variant cases must isolate regardless of vaccine status"..... does this mean if my son had it but I didn't I would have to isolate like before?
From the government website!

All contacts of suspected Omicron cases must self-isolate, regardless of their age or vaccination status

Copied and pasted from Government site.

You have to isolate until you've had a negative result back

Yes, it means close contacts of Omicron cases must isolate as before regardless of vaccination status. No exemptions for any specific profession either.

Yes, if you are notified that you are a contact of a new variant case you must isolate regardless of vaccination status. But this is only for notifications of new variant cases, not delta. You'll be told fairly quickly if this is the case.

How do they know which it is? They can't be sequencing everyone's samples?

No, but the tracking element will kick in and I imagine if you've tested positive after travel there will be extra attention paid too.

@Cookerhood

How do they know which it is? They can't be sequencing everyone's samples?

Apparently they don’t need to and it’s identifiable from a PCR test in a proportion of labs. Not that I understand it but Omicron has an S gene dropped and this is visible on lab testing without sequencing.

Sorry I missed part of the sentence, I was reading it off a government media image so it didn't show the full thing.
So I'm double jabbed, but if I test negative with my pcr if I'm a contact I still have to isolate for ten days 😰😰😰

Oh I see. I think that's how they spotted alpha originally too. Very clever!

@november90

Sorry I missed part of the sentence, I was reading it off a government media image so it didn't show the full thing. So I'm double jabbed, but if I test negative with my pcr if I'm a contact I still have to isolate for ten days 😰😰😰

Do you know anyone with the new variant though? Only a handful of cases so far, over 99.9% of current cases are Delta so you don't have to isolate.

If it's just bog standard Delta then normal rules apply

Yes. Bloody ridiculous

Basically this has made the NHS tracking app useless again. Since August loads of people had turned it on, safe in the knowledge that they’d be notified if they had contact with Covid but not required to isolate unless they were actually ill. It was very useful for a few months. Whereas now healthy people are at risk of being told to isolate so they’ll just turn it off.

@LefttoherownDevizes This whole thing started with one case, so that's no comfort!

[quote LindaEllen]@LefttoherownDevizes This whole thing started with one case, so that's no comfort![/quote]
But it's very unlikely that if you have Covid it's Omicron at the moment unless you know you've got a local confirmed case. Eventually there may be much more Omicron, by which time they'll know if it's any more risky and thus requires the higher level isolation rules, or that we can revert back to the isolation only for unvaccinated. It's just buying time whilst they assess risk

This feels like it’s has the possibility of descending into chaos.

The self isolating have me incredible anxiety, I've felt so much better since if was lifted. All go a sudden I'm feeling extremely suffocated again.
Hoping it won't effect my household but now my son os in school I'm really worried as it will no doubt spread at a crazy rate!