COVID-19: Brazil reduces quarantine for asymptomatic cases from ten to five days

The Brazilian government reduced the mandatory quarantine for people who contract COVID but who are asymptomatic from 10 to 5 days, official sources reported this Monday.

The reduction of the mandatory isolation time for asymptomatic patients was announced by the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, after a meeting of technicians in which similar measures adopted by other countries, such as the United States, were analyzed.

The new guidance of the Ministry establishes that asymptomatic patients have to remain isolated at home for five days and that they can return to work or their usual activities if, after that quarantine, they obtain a negative result in a covid diagnostic test.

Asymptomatic individuals can return to work after seven days of isolation even without a negative covid test result if they continue to have no symptoms.

In the case of people who contract the disease and present symptoms (symptomatic), the orientation is that they remain a minimum of seven days isolated, but this quarantine can be extended up to ten days in case the fever and respiratory problems persist.

The new guidelines will be included in an administrative act that will be published this Tuesday and that will serve as a basis for companies to have greater control over the days that they will have to grant leave to employees with COVID.

Some sectors, such as air transport and restaurants, have been facing problems in Brazil in recent days because they have seen their workforce reduced by the covid at a time when the pandemic, driven by the high contagion of the omicron variant, It has multiplied by eight the average number of infections in the last two weeks.

According to the sector’s employers’ association, Brazilian restaurants are currently operating with 80% of their workforce due to the fact that one in five workers is with covid. The airlines, for their part, have had to cancel dozens of flights due to the lack of crew members.

Queiroga affirmed that Brazil is following the steps taken by other countries that also have high COVID cases and cited the recent decision of the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that also reduced the isolation time from 10 to 5 days. recommended for asymptomatic patients.

“These are measures that are being adopted in other countries and are based on scientific evidence,” said the minister, who also recalled that the Government of France authorized doctors infected with COVID but asymptomatic to continue working.

In the same sense, the National Health Confederation (CNSaude), the employers’ association of the hospital sector in Brazil, recommended this Monday that professionals in the sector who have been infected but are asymptomatic and already have the booster dose of the vaccine can continue working without the need for quarantine.

Brazil is one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic; the second in number of victims after the United States, with 620,091 deaths, and the third in number of infections after the United States and India, with about 22.6 million cases.

Although the country had been reducing cases in recent months and in December they were already at the same levels as in April 2020, that is, in the first weeks of the pandemic, infections registered a strong jump in January due to the rapid spread of the omicron variant.

The average number of infections in the last week rose this Monday to 36,231 per day, more than eight times than the one recorded two weeks ago, on December 27 (4,346 infections per day).

With the jump of 733.2% in fourteen days, the average of infections this Monday was the highest for a day in just over five months. Brazil did not register such a high average number of infections since the measure on July 29, 2021 (45,049 cases per day). (I)