South Africa Revokes Self-Isolation Obligation of COVID-19 Patients Without Symptoms, What Is The Reason.

Gratisun.site - The South African government issued a regulation that caused debate, after no longer requiring self-isolation for COVID-19 patients who are not symptomatic.

Not only that, for reasons of immunity that has been formed, the isolation period of symptomatic COVID-19 patients was cut from 10 days to 7 days.

Presidential Minister Mondli Gungubele made the remarks in a statement on Monday (31/1). Following an earlier special Cabinet meeting on amendments, the authority made changes based on pandemic trajectories and vaccination rates.

South Africa is currently at its lowest level in stage five COVID-19 status.

"The basis for this amendment is informed by a substantially increased proportion of people with COVID-19 immunity, surpassing 60-80 percent in a number of serum surveys," the government said in a statement.

"The information was put together through a system used by the Ministry of Health which reported that South Africa nationally was free from the fourth wave," he added.

People with symptomatic COVID-19 will now only undergo isolation for seven days instead of 10 days. While the contact does not have to do isolation if they do not experience symptoms.

The cabinet also reviewed the continuation of full-time schools, deciding that elementary, middle and special school students would return to school every day.

The 1-metre social distance rule applied in schools was also removed, as stated in the statement. South Africa, which recorded more than 3.6 million infections and 95,093 COVID-19 deaths, was the worst hit by a pandemic.

The last wave in the country was driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

On Monday data from the National Institute for Infectious Diseases (NICD) showed there were 1,366 daily cases and 71 new deaths, 14 of which occurred in the past 1-2 days.