Bring back 14-day quarantine, or longer

 

The MAEPS quarantine centre in Serdang, Selangor. An epidemiologist has suggested returning to the 14-day quarantine period previously in practice.

From Victoria December: On Dec 14, our government decided to shorten the mandatory quarantine period for international travellers from 14 days to 10 days.

While this may save some costs of a stay in hotels or designated quarantine centres, it is definitely crucial to think about how this could be a threat for true positive cases being let out to the community, especially with the current spread of more transmissible strains like B.1.17 (201/501Y.V1) that was first identified in the United Kingdom in September and B.1.351 (20H/501Y.V2) that was first identified in South Africa in October.

Besides these two, another mutated strain, the P.1(20J/501Y.V3), was detected in Brazil and Japan in January 2021.

Even though until today there is no known difference in clinical outcomes associated with those SARS-CoV-2 variants, there is evidence from genomic sequencing that these strains have higher rates of transmission and this could lead to more cases, hence, increasing the number of persons overall who need clinical care, worsening the already existing burden on the healthcare system and the possible increase in more severe cases, and even deaths among high-risk populations with underlying health issues.

In May 2020, the health director-general mentioned that about 24% or 88 cases out of 360 positive Covid-19 cases among Malaysians returning from overseas were only found to be positive on the second swab test, indicating that these cases tested negative on the first day of their quarantine and turn up positive during the second screening on the 13th day or earlier.

These cases were still undergoing the mandatory 14-day quarantine at the time.

With the new system, we would be releasing travellers who could test negative on the 9th or 10th day back to their homes, only for them to turn out positive a few days later.

There could be a high chance of them ignoring any symptoms like flu or fever leaning towards Covid-19 as well, because of their negative test results before they were released from the quarantine centres.

Three days ago, Japanese doctors detected three people with the B.1.1.7 strain in Shizuoka and all three had no travel history to the UK and are assumed to have been infected in Japan.

This similar scenario could happen in our country in no time as we are still receiving travellers from countries that have detected these mutated strains. We’re dealing with a pandemic and people’s lives.

The current trend in our country shows more younger people, children and babies getting infected, with more of them getting admitted to the ICU and some passing away tragically.

Young people and children have many underlying health issues as well and Covid-19 is still a mystery with many unknowns. Prevention is always better than cure.

Many things have already happened in our country, many of which could have been prevented. Therefore, it is vital to revert to the mandatory quarantine of at least 14 days or perhaps a little more.

If we don’t do something about this, we might be looking at widespread community transmission in this country driven by all these mutated strains with higher transmissibility. Hence, this could lead to a huge negative impact on people’s health.

Every life matters.

Victoria December is the pseudonmym of an epidemiologist. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.