No quarantine for asymptomatic close contacts, including unvaxxed

 

Covid-19 close contact who do not display symptoms of the disease will no longer need to quarantine themselves, said Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

This is even if they have not been vaccinated against Covid-19.

“I’m announcing this because there have been requests. For example, at boarding schools where they (students) could not receive a booster dose due to their age and could not be exempted from quarantine.

“So now, asymptomatic close contacts don’t need to isolate regardless of vaccination status,” Khairy (above) told a press conference at the parliament building today, which was also broadcasted live.

Prior to this, asymptomatic close contacts who have received a Covid-19 booster shot are exempted from quarantine but must conduct a self-test on day one and day three after being notified of the exposure.

Close contacts who received booster shots and have Covid-19 symptoms need to quarantine for five days and conduct a self-test.

Fully vaccinated individuals will need to quarantine for five days regardless of symptoms and conduct a self-test if symptoms do arise. The rules are similar for unvaccinated or partially vaccinated individuals, except that the quarantine lasts seven days instead of five.

Currently, only those above 18 years old have received Covid-19 booster shots.

MOH monitoring short-interval Covid-19 reinfections

At the same press conference, Khairy also announced extending booster shot eligibility to adolescents who are moderately or severely immunocompromised. However, these shots have yet to be rolled out.

On another matter, Khairy said his ministry is also studying reports of short-interval Covid-19 reinfections. This could have implications for fully vaccinated individuals who recently recovered from a Covid-19 infection and subsequently come into close contact with a Covid-19 patient.

Short-interval Covid-19 reinfections refer to two separate Covid-19 infections on the same individual within a short period of time. This interval is typically defined as within two or three months.

Malaysia’s Covid-19 rules currently exempt fully vaccinated individuals from quarantine when they become close contacts if they had a previous Covid-19 infection within the last 60 days.

Khairy said such reinfections are found to be possible within as little as 20 days. They predominantly involve those who are young, unvaccinated and have moderate symptoms.

"Even my officers were reinfected, also within 20 days," he said.

Citing a study in Denmark, Khary said most of these reinfections involved one Omicron sublineage for the first infection and a different Omicron sublineage for the second.

The Omicron BA.2 sublineage is currently the dominant variant in Malaysia since February. It is more transmissible than the BA.1 sublineage that came before it, though there is no sign of it causing more severe disease.

The BA.2 sublineage comprises 67.8 percent out of 2,008 Omicron samples that have been genomically confirmed in Malaysia from March 17 up to today, said the Health Ministry citing data from the genetic data repository Gisaid.

The BA.1 sublineage makes up another 31.8 percent, while the remaining 0.3 percent are BA.3.

As for the XE recombinant subvariant, which is a combination of the BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron subvariants, there is still no sign of it in Malaysia.

The XE subvariant was first reported in the UK on Jan 19 and has since been reported in Thailand. So far, there are no signs of whether it would cause more severe disease or evade prior immunity.

- Mkini