Allowing those who have received two doses of a Covid vaccine to skip quarantine could breed resentment and result in mass non-compliance, a scientific adviser has warned.
Downing Street has confirmed it is looking at whether to drop all legal self-isolation measures for fully vaccinated people who come into contact with someone who is infected “as part of the post-step 4 world”.
It comes after the Times reported that a meeting of the Covid operations committee would take place on Monday at which ministers are expected to sign off a plan that will mean those who have been double-jabbed will be “advised”, after 19 July, to take daily tests but not be required to do so.
Robert West, a professor in health psychology at University College London’s Institute of Epidemiology and Health, told Times Radio he could “see the rationale” for the policy, but that there were significant problems that “outweigh potential benefits”.
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
“When you get unfairness in situations like this, you get resentment and when you get resentment you can get loss of compliance.”
West added that “the only possible scenario” where the policy might work was “a long way down the line” when everyone has been offered a double vaccine.
However, Dr Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer in communicable diseases at the University of Exeter’s medical school, said he thought it was “perfectly OK” for people who had received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine to be exempt from quarantine measures.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The gold standard would be to be cautious even if you have been immunised twice – in other words, fully immunised.
“However, as a measured action going forward I think it is OK and my reasons are as follows: an immunised person is less infectious and furthermore, the testing of people who are in quarantine isolating is pretty inaccurate. So balancing both, I think it is perfectly OK.”
Asked whether he thought vaccines had broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and death, he said: “You are absolutely right in that we are now noticing that while the case numbers have gone up, a proportionate similar rise in the number of hospitalisations and deaths has not occurred and therefore we feel that the vaccines are working and they are working really well at preventing people from entering ICU, ventilators and death.
“Therefore, having uncoupled that, we can start thinking about other uncoupling measures as well, such as no need to quarantine after being fully immunised.”
Epidemiologist Prof Christophe Fraser, who advised the Department of Health on test and trace, said a “midway” proposal could be that those who have received both jabs are tested every day instead of undertaking a quarantine period.
West warned infection rates were “getting out of control”, and that the discussion was “a bit of a distraction” from rising case numbers.
“The hope is that of course that it won’t reach the levels that we saw in January, but it doesn’t have to, because the NHS has already been so badly hit, and the staff are so stressed now,” he said.
“We have to catch up on routine [treatments], so it wouldn’t take a lot for the NHS to be very severely affected.”
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that about one in 260 people in private households in England had Covid in the week to 26 June – up from one in 440 in the previous week and the highest level since the week to 27 February.
The British Medical Association said that keeping some protective measures in place after 19 July was “crucial” to stop spiralling case numbers having a “devastating impact” on people’s health, the NHS, the economy and education.
