Juanma Moreno open to making Andalucia's quarantine period even shorter

Juanma Moreno says he is prepared to debate with the ‘health experts’ to make the quarantine period even shorter

Juanma Moreno, the president of the Junta de Andalucia, today, Tuesday, January 4, told journalists in Malaga that he is in favour of sitting down with the health experts to see if cutting the duration of Covid quarantine, even more, can be possible.

He was relating such a cut to the instance of asymptomatic or mild cases, given the effect their isolation has on the “productive environment”, while warning that “entire companies are being blocked”.
This comes after yesterday’s decision by the ‘Committee of Experts’, to modify the monitoring and tracking of cases with Covid-19 and their contacts. They also chose to prioritise testing vulnerable people or people with serious symptoms, and not to carry out telephone follow-up of close contacts in quarantine.

“In this sixth wave, it has nothing to do with the previous waves, because we have the Omicron variant, which is much more infectious but also much milder and with a much lower level of clinical incidence than in previous waves”, explained Juanma Moreno.

“I see all the news daily, and know that the new variant is less serious, and much milder. It is not the level of incidence that we must take into account, rather the clinical incidence, and the number of hospitalised, admissions to Intensive Care Units (ICU) and deaths”, he added.

The President assured that the quarantines of positives, which have already been lowered by consensus from ten to seven days, are in “constant debate”, and he warned that it does not seem to make “much sense that people without symptoms or with very mild symptoms, have to stay home for a week”.

This decision is a “not political decision, but a health, technical and scientific one”, he quickly stressed, opting to “see the evolution” of the number of infected and “see what the Interterritorial Health Council decides to do next to reform quarantines”.

As he highlighted, the current quarantine period of seven days of isolation in all confirmed cases is posing “many problems in the productive field, blocking entire companies not only in the sports field, which is the one that most jumps to the media, but also in the business field”.

“It is a decision that I alone cannot make, because I do not have the knowledge, or the experience, it is for the scientists in the health field to decide”, indicating, “If the experts say no, the debate is over”.
“But, if they see it as possible, it would be convenient to see how far it could be taken, because it is generating a problem from the economic and social point of view due to the high incidence of infection, but without direct correspondence in the clinical field”, concluded the President, as reported by diariodesevilla.es.

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